Max Romantschuk

I'm a new face in the MIDIbox community, currently working on my first project, a synth programmer for my Roland Alpha Juno 1. The thing is, Wilba keeps holding these mega-sales of those delicious SID chips... And I can't make up my mind if I should buy some and build a SID, or not... The building wouldn't happen for a long time. I have four kids and little time to spare, so basically I'm trying to make up my mind if I should get a few chips before they become really rare. The thing is, I have a nice analog synth, and a nice FM synth. I don't need more, but should I do it just for the fun factor? If I were to build a SID it'd probably make more sense to use just one or two chips. I tend to do finished pieces on the computer anyway. So I guess my SID would be a toy to play with mostly and a fun project to build for the heck of building. :) Opinions? Get chips while I still can or roll my own MIDIbox-powered analog modular beast in 10-15 years instead? ;)

Coming in to this thread late... I was just going to recommend bit masking as a simple way to reduce bandwidth, and... well... Never mind. ;) The other, rather more complicated thing you could do if you wanted further optimization is refrain from sending redundant data. That would of course mean storing the interface state in the computer end, and only sending the changes through MIDI. But probably doesn't make sense as you already seem to have everything in order. :) I like the idea of this monome-OSC-bridge-thingy... Makes me want to build a button matrix at some point. :)

Have you built more than one of these puppies? I see both a white-cased and a black-cased version in your flickr set. Liking the sandwich-case approach. :)

Nice! :) I wish I had time to help out with that, but I'm saving all the extravagant projects for retirement... ;) (And as long as I can't shake this darn cold I'm not going anywhere with my current project either.) Nah. I don't do worship. ;) But I do offer my gratitude and respect to all who build things that others can further build upon. :)

Nice project! :) In my opinion, the only real advantage the monome has over midiboxes is that Open Sound Control (OSC) is the default interface of choice. Not because it's better than MIDI but it is easier to interface emerging stuff using OSC. Then again, I've understood TK is working on a new ARM-based core?.. I'm smelling new possibilities. ;)

I'm still very new at this myself, but logically it seems like either the two offending pins are shorted, or the shift register is faulty. I'd swap the shift register with one connected to a set of non-malfunctioning pins. If the problem persists on the same pins there has to be a short somewhere on the board. If the problem moves to another set of pins you have a faulty shift register. Will someone please verify my logic? My first DIN is still not yet soldered... ;)

Looking good! :) When I looked at the assembly pics on the blog I can just imagine how it felt when you saw all those cables starting to crop up... Great that they all fit in the end! :)

http://www.ucapps.de/mbhp/mbhp_dinx4.pdf ;) PS. Just be glad stryd_one wasn't here to answer this for you... He'd have let you know good for not bothering to look for the answer yourself...

Wasn't it possible to install individual KDE apps on a Gnome desktop? I can't remember the dependencies, but I'm sure synaptic will tell in case you just try out installing Kate on the default Gnome desktop... (Windows Vista at work... aaargh...)

Darn... I only had time to partially finish the LCD cable tonight. Too much other stuff to do I'm afraid, and I won't be at home until thursday, so I'll officially have to wait until next year until I'll get any further. It seems it was wise to put all the relevant links in one place, as I couldn't get it all done in one sitting. I'll post pics and stuff like I have so far once I get the cable done and hopefully the LCD working! :) (I keep wondering how hard that thing is to fry... ;) )

We're not fundamentalist. We're just respectful of the MIDIbox license. The creator of the platform doesn't want other people to manufacture his designs commercially, and that's his call to make. Like other people said, if you're paying only for the materials/parts it should be OK. If someone is building and selling MIDIboxes at a profit then it's both a violation of the license on their part and supporting someone doing this on your part.

Yay! :) I've been thinking about making my own caps too... I want them to be just right and probably sqare for my project. Any documentation on how yours will work? How do you fix them to the switch? More pics! ;)

We have a flickr pool? How come nobody told me? ;)

OK... Partially just documenting some links for myself here, but I hope to get the LCD connected tonight and did some research: The pinout of my Nanox LCD, http://www.mikrocontroller.net/attachment/23162/NANOX_NDM162.pdf seems to be the standard pinout for 16x2's so everything is OK there. (Backlight in a different place but that shouldn't be a problem...) The LCD wiki page ( http://www.midibox.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=lcd ) linked Jim Henry's excellent wiring guide: http://www.midibox.org/users/jim_henry/building_a_midibox_lcd_cable.pdf And finally the pinout on the core's side: http://ucapps.de/mbhp/mbhp_lcd.pdf That should be all info I'll be needing.

I had the same problem yesterday in fact. Firefox used up 600 megs of memory by the time i killed it... ;) If you can't be bothered to resize images yourself perhaps consider something like flickr (what I'm using), hotlinking is allowed and their webapp will handle resizing (to multiple sizes) for you. And there are a ton of uploader tools to handle uploading instead of using a browser. Ditto on the wondering... I have some of those, and in the catalog of the store I bought them from there is a variation with a little pin on top that has associated caps, but haven't seen no naps for the flat ones... Can you enlighten us noofy?

I usually think stryd_one is a little harsh, but today I agree with him... :) You need to do more reading... Start with these: http://www.ucapps.de/mbhp.html http://www.ucapps.de/mios.html Once done, go through everything in the left-hand menu on ucapps. Once done, dig into the wiki, and get to grips with the forum search. Use advanced search and have it show message bodies. In any case, I'd still suggest the route I'm going: A minimal setup to start with and use that to learn the platform. Like I said I currently have a core, a DIN, an AIN and an LCD. One of each. I have no idea what I'll need in the end, but with those I can do both digital and analog inputs and output on the LCD. If you want to get a feel for what soldering these kits are like check out my project blog: http://www.midibox.org/forum/index.php/topic,12698.0.html This community can be a little harsh at times, but then again electronics isn't like HTML coding. ;) Fucking stuff up can cost money or cause fire hazards... So educating yourself really is a must. In any case what your proposing will likely require (C or assembler) coding skills too... The finished midibox apps only handle a small subset of what's possible with MIOS.

I've thought about this for ages! :) These days there are relatively cheap piezo-to-MIDI converters out there (Alesis Trigger|iO for example). But that wouldn't be wearable, of course... ;) I'm aware there's DIY stuff as well... Haven't seen any open source ones though. It would probably be possible to trigger the djembe with a solenoid, but how that would sound I don't know... When it comes to a djembe-like trigger on the other hand, nothing I've seen comes close to Roland's HPD-15. Those are insanely responsive... but equally pricy.

Your questions so far are really general... ;) What I'd suggest is to spend some more time reading through http://www.ucapps.de/ and the wiki, http://wiki.midibox.org/ There is a lot of information out there, and it is confusing. Give your mind time to let it sink in. Once you have a better understanding and begin to come up with a plan, post it and request for more feedback. The funny thing with DIY stuff is that there are a lot of things which are simply a matter of preference. :) Both Mike and SmashTV should be fine for parts. Smash's PCB's are silkscreened, which makes component placement a bit easier. I'm starting a project myself at the moment... I've chosen to order a few modules (core, DIN, AIN, LCD) to experiment with. Once I get a proper feel for the platform I'll be making more permanent choices.

Thanks for the encouraging comments on the documenting / blog! :) I've been thinking a lot about how to mount stuff. I'd like to have the look of the box reflect my Alpha Juno somehow, but not sure in what sense yet. I'll probably be drawing a lot of panel options once I know what hardware I want to use. I already have one panel draft in the works. I've found I can export postscript from Inkscape and convert it to HPGL with pstoedit, to import into Front Panel Designer. That means I can do nice little line drawings of stuff like waveforms etc. and have Schaeffer engrave them right into the panel. The only thing I think I know about the UI part is that I want to build the box so that it will have the panel mounted at an angle standing behind the Alpha Juno, resulting in a Minimoog-style approach. This is both because I like the idea and because it would take up more space than I can afford if it were to lay flat on a table. Like I said I have soldered, but almost exclusively cables. Nothing this small really... Fortunately even the el-cheapo soldering iron I borrowed from work seems to be doing the job nicely. My soldering gun I use for cables is useless for something like this, the tip on that thing is huge! ;)

Looks sweet! :) I thought long and hard about posting on my own blog vs. the forums... But the forums ultimately won as no one reads my blog anyway. ;)

It seems fortune smiles upon me today. The core is completed, and I've successfully (AFAIK) uploaded MIOS. :) Apart from a weird wiring issue when hooking up power everything just worked. Even MIDI IO in Java on my Ubuntu box performed flawlessly. Resistors and diodes soldered: I had to get creative with R2, otherwise J4 wouldn't have fit on the board... Caps and transistors added: Took me a while to figure out which of the small caps went where... tricky with ambiguous markings on those little buggers. ;) The completed core: And finally hooking everything up: I would have loved to get the LCD wired up tonight as well, but that will have to wait... Hopefully the day after tomorrow if all goes well. Some clarification on my approach to this project: I don't think of this as a technically very difficult project. Like bugfight said TK has made it very simple to hook up stuff through various modules and get results quickly. But that doesn't cover the art of user interface design. One of the main goals with this project is making playing with my Alpha Juno as much fun as possible. That calls for the best possible UI. That's the difficult part, and also why I'm not going to hurry. I'll probably spend a lot of time in the prototyping stage to get a good feel for what works. I want to try out both pots and encoders. I think I'll be using pots, and a single encoder to tweak values. I might use faders, but not so sure about those... I don't know if I want my box to be able to receive a patch and hold all parameters in memory, so that you could call up a patch on the synth, send it to the programmer, and tweak it further. This becomes tricky if you have stateful UI components like pots. But if I were to use encoders only I'd have to have led rings if I want visual feedback... Or encoders with a built in switch to call up the parameter value on the LCD. I guess I'm saying I'm a bit of a meticulous planner... I like to make detailed plans before taking action. That's the timesink for me. ;) But I'm also a very patient man. It's not an issue for me if it'll really take two years until this project is complete.

You mean because I estimated a lot of time to get stuff done? Maybe so... Then again I don't have a lot of time to work on this once things return to normal around here (wife and kids away until newyear's). I don't think this is a very difficult project. The difficulty comes from doing it it a few random hours a month, usually late at night. Having time to work on something all day like today is the exception that justifies the rule for me. ;) And I am. :) But I still want the end result to be as good as possible, given the time and money I will spend on this project. What you said about MIOS hiding a lot of the nitty gritty for me is true. But I'm the kind of guy who might take time to read the MIOS sources just to understand what's going on under the hood better. ;)

I have started my project. :) I created a separate thread with a progress blog: http://www.midibox.org/forum/index.php/topic,12698.0.html

I have officially started work on my MIDIbox! :) I've set up a flickr set with all images I'll be posting. All images will be in that set at a nice big resolution. I'm not posting the full resolution images in this thread, so if you want a closer look keep that in mind. First things first: I took some unboxing photos when Mike's parts arrived a while back. I'm attatching the ones relating to the core module, as that's what I'm starting with... Mikes parts came in a neat little package, here just opened: This is the core pcb: And here are the core module parts: Some people have previously voiced concern about the lack on anti-static packaging. I hope this won't be a problem for me. So anyway, I got right down to business following the soldering guide at ucapps.de. Here's my first ever MIDIbox soldering joint: There's a bit of excess solder, still getting used to a new soldering iron an new solder... :) More stuff going in... Bridges, sockets and that one hard-to-fit resistor are done: Finally a shot of my virgin socket soldering skills: Photogeek comment: I like how the short macro focal length works out in this one. :) I'm all excited know. That's sure to change once I realize I've botched something... I'll probably have a chance to do another update later today.

A few weeks ago I decided to take the plunge and build my very first Midibox. I have a very nice Roland Alpha Juno 1 synth, which has a great sound engine but a lousy user interface. Roland made a programmer for this synth as well, the PG-300. But those are hard to come by, ugly, and ridiculously expensive for something with a bunch of flimsy faders. So I've decided to to the logical thing for any self respecting geek: Do it yourself. This isn't going to be a quick project. I have four small kids who demand most of my free time. Keeping that in mind I'll probably be progressing rather slowly, so I thought keeping a build blog only makes sense: I can document what I do and keeping my work public I'll have additional incentive not to stop for too long... ;) This project will have four main phases: Learn the Midibox platform. (1st half of 2009) Aquire and build the final hardware on the electronic level. (2nd half of 2009) Make the custom software, and iron out any hardware bugs. (1st half of 2010) Have a panel made, build a case, finish the project and properly document everything. (2st half of 2010) As you can see I'm setting a very loose schedule. I'm a bit of a perfectionist, and I'd rather do this slowly and well than quickly and poorly. As this thread grows I'll probably start distilling it into a companion Wiki page. On the skills side I have a lot to learn. I'm a programmer and software architect by trade, so software design I'm familiar with. I have no C experience. I know how to solder, but have mainly soldered audio cables in my home studio so far. I'm currently reading K&R's C Programming Language and The Art of Electronics to get my C and electronics basics in order. I can warmly recommend both books. My first step is to learn the Midibox platform. In order to do that I'm setting up a development environment, consisting of a core module, a DIN module, an AIN module and an LCD. I've ordered these from Mike's shop, and aquired some associated stuff locally. (I'm physically in Finland.) Today I'll be starting on the core. Step one is to get the core built and the LCD talking to it. I'll be posting my progress (with pictures) later today.