Hawkeye

Nooo, ilmenator, i was hoping for a purple board! Hope things get better, soon! :-) Many greets, Peter

One ribbon connection is the same as two ribbons, just with fewer wires. :-) Are you positive, that the OLEDs are exactly of the same brand and firmware revision as jbdivers? Many greets, Peter

Great idea. It would make things easier, if there was someone who would design an 8x2 LEDRing board (with the same outer dimensions, screw hole and encoder positions) and add * support for those OLEDs (or OLED carrier boards) * support for 12mm encoders - only the three lower pins need to be adjusted. The rest should stay the same, plz :smile: , now is that a PCB routing challenge or not? :phone: (Edit: to save space, i would not exclude the possibility of SMD shift registers, they are easy to solder!) That would speed up the assembly of an OLED-LRE board a lot! But, even if no one steps forward and designs a board like this, it will just work as well as described in the prototype wiring method, if you have the time, just need a few hours to install the displays. They don´t take longer than inserting the LEDs, cutting the LED pins and soldering them up, it is time intensive anyways. Many greets! Peter

Thanks, Shuriken! :-) There will be 64 encoders, but you´re right, i´ve only got 32 running now, gotta solder :smile: latigid on/sneakthief: I have not sighted the code yet, but maybe, if somebody is desparate enough, one might expand MBCV to drive a few label displays, also? They don´t need high update speed or processing power as "dumb labels", so they could probably be driven from a few out pins on the DOUT serial chain. This leaves the oscilloscope displays directly connected to J10B for update speed! Only when changing a patch or changing an encoder mapping bank, the labels need to be updated, and if the oscs stutter then, it would be probably ok... but that is for another thread :-) To anyone interested, i´ve attached the current formulor/ponoko frontpanel plans, the whole panel (with only one sidepiece) costs only around 40€, and it uses the maximum size (384x384mm) to the last millimeter :-) - It holds four 8x2 LRE boards and the menu system - you need to construct a (wooden) board carrier for yourself at the moment, but that is not soo difficult. Many greets, Peter mbProgrammaPonoko9.zip

Thanks kristal=! And many thanks for the knobbery deliveries! :-D I´ve added a pic of the reflectiveness of the material, with mah favourite framed gurl in the blurred background, hope you like it! :-) latigid on: Should be possible! You could use four of the OLEDs as oscilloscopes for the scope monitors and use the lower part as a standard SCS for the MBCV interface (There will be a section of an additinal four non-45° tilted OLEDs left of the SCS menu, the Programma will use it for envelope display, if we manage to code that - you could use it for the scopes). Many greets, Peter

Awesome, thx, for now it is just a prototype, but if other users are interested, a proper case would be nice! Many greets! Peter

Thanks, yes, those SSD1306 OLEDs are fantastic, very sci-fi looking! :-) Jojjelito's post will give hints where to obtain them - they need to be connected in 4-wire mode (the cheap I2C-only displays are not sufficient). Fairlightiii should decide, what to do regarding the LRE-boards - Maybe he is up for another batch run? We will need some time to finish this properly, anyways! :-) Meanwhile, the 50% smoked acrylics panel has arrived from Formulor. It is shaded enough to hide the OLED wiring cable spaghetti, but transparent enough to let them LEDs and OLEDs shine through with enough brightness! :-) Many greets and enjoy! Peter

Thanks! :-) This first version is a desktop version, but it can be easily expanded into rack format - Fairlightiiis LEDring-PCB size fits both worlds! :) Will upload the panel definition file soon, so, if you are interested, you can enlarge it a bit and add rackmount screw slots. Also, the postman just brought the first manufactured frontpanel and it seems to fit :-), will upload some pictures later on! Many greets and have a great day! Peter

Hola folks, Jojjelito and myself are currently collaborating on a bigger MIDIboxNG project, that should help facilitate patch programming for all those synth users, that are unhappy with the bad/minimalistic user interfaces of their rack and keyboard synths, especially when programming new patches. This project was planned for years and never took shape... But, thanks to TK., MIDIboxNG came to the rescue! Its codebase has all of the needed functionality integrated in a very generic way, allowing to do so many things! So... why this project, additionally? We thought, for the common usecase of programming patches for (multiple) complex synth engines, it would be nice to have the option to build a MBNG with a standardized component list, a predesigned frontpanel and to have a helpful display layout, with the option to add additional hardware modules (like a joystick vector mixer) later on. So, "MBProgramma" is basically just a name to identify a MIDIboxNG with the hardware properties listed below. The idea of presenting a standardized project yields some benefits: a) most important: we can share synth configurations among other users - they will work on all MBProgrammas without config file changes - if someone is brave enough to build that FS1r configuration, all other owners will benefit from the effort b) newcomers can focus on building a proven setup, which saves time, as they do not have to design everything from scratch. c) we can document and learn from mistakes along the way, so that other people can avoid them :-) d) maybe we can contribute back to MBNG, if TK. accepts some code fragments, like the bitmap graphics loader, or so. e) we can write specialized code for specific hardware, in this case some graphics routines for the 128x64px OLEDs - or something synth-programmer specific... The current hardware requirements for a MBProgramma are as follows: a) a STM32F4 core b) one DOUTx4 digital out module c) four of fairlightiiis LRE8x2 LEDring Modules (ideally equipped with pushable encoders for parameter input acceleration) d) twenty-four SSD1306 compatible 128x64px OLEDs e) a SCS-based menu section, which allows to switch patches (aka switch through programmable synth configurations) and change banks (64 encoders are not nearly enough for the complex synths) f) all is housed below an affordable acrylics frontpanel in MBSEQV4L-style (all boards may be mounted on a wooden construction base, but maybe someone is willing to design a full case?). We will provide the panel file download for formulor/ponoko, when the panel has arrived and has been tested :-). g) an optional analog extension box, allowing for joystick vector input, pot-fader input and analog pedal sockets. Basically, the Programma is a MBNG with four 8x2 LEDring boards and a SCS and maaany displays. We present a novel way of mounting/using the OLEDs to label the encoders and have added some minor code patches to add some extra bling :-) Our tests have shown, that it is next to impossible to use a few banked LEDring boards without proper labels. The displays are mounted on the encoder boards and they support graphical labels, that are directly read from SD-card (and are editable directly in photoshop, without use of a file converter), so we can have a lot of different banks with nice graphics :smile: The project has just started and will be a long ongoing project, also, all those synthesizer programmer configurations will have to be written - we will use this thread to upload pictures and configurations along the way. Feedback is also very welcome! :-) Jojjelito has agreed to do much of the documentation work ;-), so i´ll just chime in from time to time to post pictures and give some free bad advice! :-) Many greets, Peter

Confirmed, it is difficult... It works fine in my MB6582, but not in Altitudes, despite identical codebase - sth is different. It works fine on a bare 8-bit core, though. And I think it should be possible to get it working in 32-bit land, as well. The price is great, but only worth the hassle if you are ready for some PIC assembler headaches :-). Many greets, Peter

Really nice! Those SSM2044s sound great! :-) Many greets, Peter

Awesome jam! Very well done! :-) Many greets, Peter

Hola, yes, had a similar problem, but with (nonstandard) VFDs: it involved a bit of driver hacking (changed 8bit access mode to 4bit mode, which helped, and separated the control lines, which i nowadays think was not necessary, but you learn ;-)) Many greets, Peter

Welcome back! :-) RGB LEDs in the MB6582 would be way more difficult than a multicolor backlight display, as the MB6582 is prepared only for two-pin LEDs. You have to choose which color goes where! :-) Many greets and a happy 2015! Peter Edit: regarding the control of the display backlight color: here is a small tutorial on how to do it with an arduino: https://learn.adafruit.com/character-lcds/rgb-backlit-lcds I´d stuff a small pro mini in there (a few $), with that one, you can change the backlight to any color (or color animation). It is also a nice starting project (without MB6582)

Welcome on board! regarding your other question. Yes, the standard windows drivers are good enough, you´ll also get four USB MIDI ports for free (16 channels usable on each one!), when attaching a new 32-bit core (like the LPC17 or STM32F4). Also, should there be problems with windows USB stability, there are alternative free USB drivers for download (offered from Ploytec), which may improve stability a bit. But for a standard workflow (e.g. using Cubase), all is well! :-). Recommendation: go to ucapps.de and read as much as possible! :-) Many greets, Peter

Yes, thanks to Tim (not Mike :-D), it is available in the shop again, and it is currently in stock! :-) Also, his new shop allows to directly link to it, so here you go: http://midiboxshop.bigcartel.com/product/seq-cs-board Don´t worry, the URL is correct, SmashTV has moved the shop to a new system/shop provider. Many greets, Peter

Applying for that AINSER64, if still available :-) You´ve got some mail! Many greets, Peter

Great work! Looks like a lot of fun! :thumbsup: Many greets! Peter