Breeze

I considered that too, but in the end I'd really like to get a digital audio output out of my iPad so I need an all-in-one solution. So I'm considering the Tascam iU2 which does MIDI. Audio In, SPDIF out and can power the iPad as well. It's a little expensive and it seems to be on the cheap side build wise; I'm waiting to see one locally. I'm also waiting to see if something better comes out. The Line6 Mobile In is another candidate. In the meantime, I found that using a powered hub, I can use my Apogee MiniMe with the GM5 MIDI concurrently, giving me a good A/D, decent D/A and MIDI. It's too bad only the A/D input goes to the SPDIF... unless I connect the D/A out back into the input.... back to the lab... :shifty: BTW: if any of you are looking for guitar input circuitry for the Mic in at the headphone input, I found these useful links: Planet-Z's simple iOS Guitar circuit This is part 2 of 3, but it's the one with the schematic. What looks like the schematic of an iRig And if you want to plug whatever preamp into the iOS mic input this one does the trick. Apparently the mic input will only work with the iOS device if you use the 2k7 resistor from mic input to ground. And finally, the TRRS input jack polarities are T audio Left, R audio Right, R common ground, S Mic input. If you can find and modify TRRS cables, great. I got my plugs at Digikey (CP-35401SP-ND I know it says "stereo" but it is TRRS); However, it turns out the bottom sleeve connector is also the ground lug, which is a bit awkward. TRRS is hard to find; I haven't found any TRRS jacks (if anyone knows...) Remember though, that the mic input on iOS devices has a low cut below 100 Hz or so, so it's not the best way to get audio into your iDevice. But it's not too bad for guitar, a typically mid-heavy instrument particularly in its electric form, and can be compensated for in DSP.

I built one of the small PC board GM5 boards with a single MIDI I/O. I think it supports more, but I wanted to build the smallest interface possible. So I guess the power draw must be very small because plugging it into the iPad's Camera Connector Kit's USB connector works without issues, without additional power via PS or USB Hub. Even with the LED still in use. FYI...

The deadline appears to be when nILs finds the time to take care of this. What's a "Palantir"?

I ran MIDItest on W7-64 with my GM5 interface using the 1.0.10.0 Plyotec drivers on my Q6600 system and got these results: Byte latency: 0.82 ms Byte jitter: 0.32 ms Byte max deviation: 1.82 ms Then I found these better results on this post using the GM5 on Vista-32 and using the 1.0.6.0 Ploytec drivers on a similar Q6600 system: Byte latency: 0.16 ms Byte jitter: 0.16 ms Byte max deviation: 1.02 ms That's quite a discrepancy. Could the drivers be responsible for this?

Boy, I'm totally confused... I'm on the list: have invoices been sent yet? It's now March 23rd. Thanks.

Sorry. "or do not pay on time..." threw me. Thanks for the clarification.

I don't know who these "happy fellas" are but I would like to know if we're at the paying stage yet. I just visited this board for the first time in weeks and noticed this thread, and it's unclear from this thread's OP whether we're at the payment stage already. I don't think I've received a payment request, but I don't want to miss out... thanks.

Good to know you're ok! No news isn't always good news... How many units do you need for ordering?

Is this bulk sale still alive? I've PM'ed nILS to change my order but gotten no answer. Anyone?

12 months ago... oops...

Hi all! A little post for the benefit of anyone jumping into the GM5 kit blind. I've been DIYing electronics for many years, but I never did SMD till now. Having moved to Win7-64, my $1k Unitor 8 mkII suddenly became a piece of junk (so much for "many years to come", Emagic...). I heard of the GM5 looking for an alternative, and ordered 2 of the small PC boards and 2 GM5s. I had never done SMD, but it stayed on my desk for a couple of weeks while I mustered the knowledge and courage to tackle soldering this tiny chip. To make a long story short, what worked for me was: Having a 10X loupe and a magnifying lamp. Gluing the chip to the board with a tiny drop of epoxy! I couldn't get the damn thing to stop slipping after many, many tries. Using Flux! I tried going pin-by-pin flux-less, but it didn't seem to work well for me. I ended up damaging one of the traces on the board close to the GM5 and had to use a wire strand to fix it. Using the Flood and Suck Technique! Even with the flux, pin-by-pin was a PITA. So out of frustration I just flooded one side of the chip with solder, and then just used my desoldering pump to suck the excess. And it worked!! I had this old MIDI distribution box which I chose to convert to use with the GM5. When I started mapping my extension board, it occurred to me that having LEDs would be a good thing. So I came back here to order the 5x5x5 PCB, but there were none left! So I bit the bullet and built my own: I strongly recommend anyone wanting to do this to be patient and get the 5x5x5 PCB because I spent a ridiculous amount of time hand routing a project PCB. However, the benefit of designing custom is that I added a few things: I wanted to use a dual color LED because it was easier to mount single LEDs in the box I had. Ideally, common-anode 3-pin dual-colored would have been perfect, but I only found common cathode red/green ones. So I used two additional 74HC14's to invert the LED signals for them. BTW: I did end up using a single 1/2 watt 100 ohm resistor in series with a 1k multi-turn and connected all the cathodes together through them to ground; it turns out though that the Red is slightly brighter than the green but though it isn't optimal, it's fine for the occasional checking they're useful for. I needed a couple of thru circuits so I tapped the connections of all five channels where the 6N138 connects to the 74HC14 to 2 multi-turn switches, and used another 74HC14 to get two independent 3-channel thru's whose input can be any of the 5 channels. I included a 5 volt regulator circuit for independent operation for when the computer is off. This turned out to be a useless mod because it's plugged into a powered USB hub which stays on all the time. So far it hasn't needed any additional power at all, despite the addition of 3 74HC14's and a power LED. In the end, other than a stupid problem where one of the standoffs was touching a trace on my custom board, everything works perfectly. I had a minor issue where the name of the first port was different than the others but installing the Ploytec drivers fixed that. A big thanks to Midibox and Ploytec for making this available. I hope some of this can help someone. It's a great little box!

Hi. I finished building a 5x5 box today with the simple GM5 board and my own extension board for all 5 channels. I soldered the LED into the GM5 board as a monitor. Everything works great! Thanks to the MIDIBOX team for making this possible :) There is one odd thing: while all channels work fine both in and out, when I play GM5 channel 5 from the computer... ... sorry: turns out a standoff was touching something it wasn't supposed to on my extension board...

Actually, for the record, there is something wrong with the math: the current requirements change with LEDs in parallel. With one resistor for several, they would get dimmer the more are lit. Forget I mentioned it... guess you can have your beer back :blush:

I had a thought: if the current consumption is so low, then wouldn't it make sense to replace all the LED current limiting resistors with a couple of trimpots? You could set LED intensity for same function LEDs to taste: 15ma * 5v = 0.075 * 5 LEDs = 0.375 watts, which many trimpots can handle and seeing as the LED's don't stay on that current consumption is worse case. Or is my math wrong?

Great! So what do I win? :drool: :)