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Hawkeye

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Posts posted by Hawkeye

  1. @SimonSays

    Welcome on board! :)

    Yes, many right-handed people prefer LH JOG cases, but there is no clear "right" or "wrong", it absolutely boils down to your personal preferences, in my opinion.

    For example, i have the v4+ directly above my keyboard, am right handed and currently use a RH JOG v4+, as during jams, i mostly use the mute screen and need quick access from the keyboard to the left side of the SEQ with my left hand to reach the primary matias switches.

    So, to decide, you should consider the placement of your sequencer relative to your master keyboard and think about which hand you will primarily use on the sequencer and which functions you need a lot. If you use the transport section (stop/start/play/record/live) and also the "menu dial" to switch the secondary matias functions a lot (e.g. switch between mute/tracks/layers modes) and want to use your left hand for that, going for a LH JOG variant is probably a good idea!

    Have a happy weekend and enjoy!

    Many greets,
    Peter

  2. Welcome to MIDIbox, @weasel!

    We also felt a dire need for a MBLRE replacement and while it maybe not matches your requirements, there is a similar board in the works, created by Andy:

    large.elrom-teaser.jpg.7f8f575e310800f8c

    It contains LED rings, pushable encoders (for parameter input accelleration), integrated OLEDs for encoder labels (one display per encoder), a row for superflux-backlit high-quality Matias switches and could be a building block of a future unified MBNG interface - we took some efforts going that way earlier on, but there were never PCBs available. If you look up the MBProgrammA, you will find a 64-encoder - 2048 LED variant with OLED as labels @jojjelito and myself had been working on for quite some time, there should be even a video demo of it being used with an old Alpha Juno around :).

    Regarding eurozone availability: you could take a look at https://midiphy.com as a MIDIbox reseller based in Germany, there should be already good euro availability for standard PCBs (cores and such).

    Have a great weekend!
    Many greets,
    Peter

     

  3. @pat_00 could you try to reupload these pictures? The forum disallows attachments larger than a certain size (i think it is 1MB?), that's probably why the images come up as broken right now -  so you might either need to reduce the JPG quality (not necessarily the resolution) in your image editor before reuploading here or you could upload them as they were on another service (e.g. imgur, dropbox, ...)

    Thanks and many greets!
    Peter

  4. @gotkovsky 

    Yes, you can run it from a good 5V/1A USB supply. I have a USB Power meter (just as @Smithy posted), and the v4+ current use hovers around 0.5-0.6A during normal use.

    On a sidenote, make sure you have a good power supply, if you experience reboots or dropouts, exchange it for another one - i tried to attach one SEQ v4+ and two LoopAs (all have about the same current draw) to a nominally 5V/3A rated PSU on a powered USB hub and experienced reboots - using the power meter i measured it all up and and the 5V rail dropped to 4.5V :) - another lesson learned, do not assume the PSU power capabilities label on the backside is correct - my cheap PSU could not even reliably supply 1.5A as indicated by the power meter :).

    Many greets,
    Peter

     

  5. @gotkovsky

    please also read my recommendation above. Another test you could do is pull the waveshare daughterboard off, switch its "powered-by" jumper from 5V in to USB mode and connect it without the wCore to your MAC using a mini USB cable. If that works (which is likely), then the problem is on the wCore somewhere, we'd need said hi-res pics, then.

    Good luck!
    Peter

  6. 58 minutes ago, niles said:

    Thank you - I wasn't sure how much of that cable I'd need for this kit and was hesitant to tear it apart. 

    @niles welcome to MIDIbox! :)

    For the Core kit, you will need pieces of 10cm, 20cm, 30cm and 40cm of 10-pin ribbon wire. (Core to MIDI8, LineTX, I2C and USB)
    For the Core kit, you will need 40cm of 16-pin ribbon wire (Core to SD Card)
    For the UI kit, you will need 7.5cm, 10cm and 2x20cm of 10-pin ribbon wire (SRIO bus through LeMECs, JA and LineTX)
    For the UI kit, you will need 25cm and 30cm of 16-pin ribbon wire (2x OLED Displays)
    And you need a 35cm split 16/8 pin ribbon wire (requiring 24 pins) to connect the new Activity Matrix displays (on JA) to LeMEC R.

     

    @gotkovsky - the waveshare board should be pushed onto the wCore PCB headers, so that the distance of the wCore underside is not more than 20mm (it needs to be installed on 20mm hex spacers in the case). If you don't manage to see the MIDI ports in MacOS, could you send us high-res photos of front and backside of the wCore PCB, so that we could have a look?

    As i saw, Andy was a bit quicker answering, he is younger and faster, hehe! Have a great weekend y'all! :)
    Many greets,
    Peter

  7. @pat_00 if you don't have access to a hot air rework station (which would be the recommended way to do it), you could try to clip off pin by pin with very fine pincers and then desolder/drag away the pin remains with your soldering iron. This obviously destroys the ICs, but should not be too stressful for the PCB. But as Andy wrote, hot air desoldering should minimize the risk to lift any pads - after warming up the target area, the IC should fall right off :).

    Many greets and good luck!
    Peter

  8. Hi and welcome to MIDIbox! :)

    I'd say there is a 50:50 chance, that they are original and will work. That ebay seller in german ebay seems to  generally have quite positive feedback, but there are also some "fake component" comments. How it could work from their side is that they pulled/desoldered the chips from old hardware, i.e. old sound cards. That's also what i would recommend, e.g. get an old soundblaster with the OPL chipset from ebay for cheap and desolder with a heat gun - that way you can be quite sure it is an original!

    Most of all: have fun!

    Many greets, Peter

  9. 12 hours ago, pat_00 said:

    Any news on the CV/gate expander?

    Andy is back from the states and has access to proper soldering and test equipment again :) Speaking for myself, we have finalized the move to the new house, thus i have more time.
    The v4+ modular extension is super high on our list, we are working on it: validation phase next and we need to design the eurorack frontpanels :).

    Many greets,
    Peter

  10. @southpole

    you are welcome! Maybe not exactly the same, but you could also look into the native patterns of the MIDIbox SEQ - switching them on the pattern screen gives you direct access to different notes/melody lines on a group of four tracks, so you could also replicate the 16 x 16 step parts by switching through patterns, i think.

    Many greets and enjoy the weekend!
    Peter

  11. @southpole

    maybe helpful regarding your first question - have a look at "Fx Loop" in the handbook:

    bullet.gif Fx Loop

    Is this an "effect" or a "tool" which is useful while editing long sequences... decide by yourself:

    Fx Loop

     

    • Global Loop Mode: following modes are supported:
      • All Tracks/Step View: loops all tracks around the visible step view
      • All Tracks/Static View: loops all tracks around the selected Offset/Step range
      • Selected Track/Step View: loops the selected track around the visible step view
      • Selected Track/Static View: loops the selected track around the selected Offset/Step range
    • Loop: enables/disables the Loop function. Can alternatively be switched via MENU+SCRUB buttons.


    Many greets, Peter

  12. Great job, Bruno, Elektruck and southpole! Sorry for my absence, we were moving and I still have to unpack a lot of boxes until normal operations can proceed :).

    Because there was a discussion ongoing regarding resistors for color mixing and lowering the resistor values e.g. for custom keycaps with smaller windows - the superflux LEDs should be able to withstand more current, and in my experimentation i went as low as 10R for blue and green (use a higher value for red!) - but then the currents are way out of datasheet specs - you are on your own, then! :-) Imho it would be best to play safe and go for 47R, then these LEDs should have a very high life expectancy and the superflux brightness is then also somewhat balanced with the brightness of the OLEDs and the matrix displays.

    To achieve the red/cyan mix as seen in the first tutorial video, you can use a single resistor going from A to 1 (red color for the running step indication) and another single resistor going from B to 2 AND 3 (cyan color for the "step has a note" indication). That second resistor results in a blue-ish cyan, as the forward voltages of blue and green are slightly different, green will not be as bright as blue. You could also try with three resistors (there is a second hole in modern LeMEC boards or you could just attach to the same pin) for fine-tuned color mixing.

    Have a good evening!
    Many greets, Peter

  13.  @mcmurray just a heads up, parcel tracking says batch #2 of the cases should be delivered tomorrow or on tuesday, will make them available in the shop, once they arrive.

    As a new shop feature, you can now subscribe to "back in stock email push notifications", when you are logged in and are browsing the product detail page, e.g. of the case you want. Then you get an email instantly from the shop, when they are available.

    There probably is more demand than supply for this second batch of cases again, but we've asked Adrian to make batch #3 a bit bigger. If you don't manage to get a case from batch #2, the next batch should be inbound again in another few weeks. We'll get there and finally stabilize supply.

    Many greets,
    Peter

  14. @synaptech - that's good news with the encoder! :cheers:

    As written above, i'd recommend to thoroughly check every SMT IC pin on LeMEC L - i had more than once problems with solder connections i thought were ok. You can "reflow" them quite easily. Please check the top pins of IC2 on LeMEC L, can't really see it in the photo, but there might be some solder missing, or they might not "reach" the PCB - check from the side with a magnifying glass.

    Good luck!
    Peter

  15. @synaptech one thing that happened once or twice at my side (built 6 lemec boards in total), was that the SMT IC soldering looks good as seen from above, but there was a little gap between IC leg and PCB, which can only seen from the side - no contact on a pin. This can happen when you "push on the IC", soldering a single leg first and the IC is not completely flat on the PCB.

    Therefore, i'd recommend to use a magnifying glass and check the 595s and 165s pin for pin, especially looking at them from the side.

    Looking at your pictures, on the LeMEC L, the upper right pins on IC2 might have suffered from such a fate - it should be easily corrected by re-soldering them with a fine tip and a tiny bit of solder.

    Many greets,
    Peter

  16. Congrats on getting it working again! As you heard my grumbling passage in the video tutorial "i should really get a mac" - really meant that at that time, as Windows seems to have quite buggy MIDI-USB. Restarting MIOS Studio or even Windows can help quite often.

    Many greets and have fun building,
    Peter

  17. @Wapata great, that's exactly its intended usecase! :) (you could optionally skip the DAW part, too and just have live fun with your loops, hehe :))

    BLM = button / led matrix, usually used for its bigger brother, the SEQ v4+ - in the LoopA context, it would be smaller and consist of 6x6 backlit buttons to launch (and stop) clips individually. Plus it would contain an additional column for "full scene launching", just like in a quite well-known clip-based DAW :)

    Have a happy weekend and thanks for your interest in it!
    Many greets, Peter

     

  18. All is correct! Two scenes have been removed to be able to store more notes per scene (all is held in memory) and to allow the upper left pushable encoder to cycle between two states when pushed. The active scene switching mode is visualized with the top or bottom LED around the top left encoder.

    These two scene switching modes are available:

    a) (default, as before) full scene switching - when a scene is switched, sync-to-measure-start all clips from the next scene - which would often "dramatically" change what is played back, as all six tracks' clips are launched from a new scene.

    b) single track scene switching - only the clip of the currently active track is switched to a new scene. This will allow for "subtle" changes - i.e. you could progress a drum track, playing different clips from it, while the other five tracks keep playing the same clips.

    These two principal modes of scene switching are necessary, as we have a mini BLM for the LoopA at least in our mental pipeline! :). It will allow direct playback access to every stored clip.

    Many greets!
    Peter

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