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Hello all, as I told in the thread dedicated to the RTP-MIDI compatible NG board I made, I added some expansion ports to the board, not only for the KissBox but also for something else on which I am working since a long time... It's time now to reveal what I am working on :smile:   Since a very long time, I work on the idea to ressucitate the Soundart Chameleon, and since the beginning, I am convinced that the MIDIBox NG CPU is the right base for it. For those who do not know what the Chameleon was: the Soundart Chameleon was an hardware synthesizer, built around a DSP56300 and a Coldfire microcontroller. The whole software base was completely opened, and it was possible to write your own synthesizer application. The bad thing is that Soundard went bankrupt, and Chameleon disappeared, which is a pity, considering that the idea was brilliant, and the price was affordable for such a machine. The MIDI part of the Chameleon was running under MIDIShare (a open concept, similar in many ways to MIOS), and it was responsible of loading the DSP code.   Then come the DSP problem... I program and design DSP boards since a long, long time for pro audio and music applications, and I know quite well that DSP may seem out of reach for DIY community. We are facing two problems : price and tooling. Almost all DSP uses BGA and other SMD industrial packages, making the idea of DIY board really out of reach for most of MIDIBox members. Making the PCB is not really a problem anymore, but soldering these chips by hand is most of the time impossible. Even "low end" DSP like the VLSI and the Spin FV-1 are SMD.   So I looked to two other solutions : recycling ASX/i-CON/Plugiator boards or use Analog Devices EZ-Kit boards For both of them, the cost is roughly the same (around 350 euros for a board - ouch!), but there is nothing to do at hardware level. If you think it's expensive, just take a look to the Monome Aleph.... 1400 dollars!!!! The Aleph is partially open source (hardware is closed source), and the software is still quite limited today (as far as I know, the Aleph only have one synth project for now). Even with a 500 dollars DSP board, a MIDIBox project would cost half this price (and would be compleetly open)   From a personal point of view, the EZKit are much better (more audio I/O, more interfacing possibilities, complete documentation available, software toolchain delivered with the kit), but they are bigger and you must write your own software (but that's where I come into the game, since I will provide the code and support for the community)   The ASX/iCON boards are delivered with three excellent software synths (the VST interface for them being simply awful however :sad: ), and they can be driven directly from MIDI I/O from the MIDIBox for simple projects. There is no technical documentation for these boards (I had to draw the schematics by myself, after hours and hours of investigation), and getting access to the DSP requires some modification (to inhibit the local processor and replace it with the MIDIBox board), but it's feasible   I have included in the RTPMIDI_CORE board the connector needed to access the EZKit and ASX boards, so the link will be very easy to make between the two boards (see "MIDIBox goes RTP-MIDI" topic for details about this board), and I am currently coding and testing the library for the STM32 to load firmware in DSP board (take care, Analog Device calls it a bootloader too, but it has nothing to see with MIOS bootloader :shifty: )   I just expect now that this project will get some interest from the MIDIBox community   I did not want to go into much details in this already quite long post, but of course, if you have any question... just ask (I am preparing some pictures of the first prototypes I made)   Benoit

Hi, for the past few weeks I have been looking at development boards as a base for developing audio/music projects. I almost decided on an STM32F7 discovery board until I found out about the MIDIbox NG. This board with its STM32F4 module looks ideal for what I want to do but I have two major questions before I can decide. I'm currently trying to learn as much as I can about MIOS and trying to find related threads on this forum but in the mean time all the help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!   1) Can I use a capacitive touch screen with the MIDIbox NG ? The projects I want to develop will make use of capacitive touch displays from 4.3” up to 7”. Either directly driven from the board or by using an intelligent display like those based on FTDI's EVE or Nextion. But I can't find any example of this, which makes me wonder if it is possible at all ? Would this mean I should write my own driver for MIOS for the screen, or could I use existing drivers and STM32 libraries for this, or even integrate GUI frameworks like µGFX, touchGFX or embedded wizard, etc .. with MIOS ? And how difficult would that be ? Or is MIOS not really designed for this and should I better look into MPU/Linux based solutions?     2) From what I understand so far, MIOS is mainly a MIDI control/processing OS, but how suited is it as a base to develop your own synth for instance? Are there any limitations or can you basically do anything you could do on a barebone STM32 board and thus use all its code examples, libraries, dev tools, toolchain ,etc ? I guess what I'm asking is, how well does MIOS and it's amazing features integrate with your own code or can you only use API functions? How transparent is it and does it impose limitations ?   Are there currently projects like these (synths, Eurorack modules, etc ..) that are based on MIDIbox that I could check out to get an idea what is possible? (I've been looking at the MIDIbox gallery and there are some truly extraordinary devices, but most seem to be controllers and I haven't yet found anything with a touch GUI)   Thanks!