First of all, thank's a million, million times to all midibox members for developing and SHARING this
incredible piece of gear, very special thanks to TK of course!
Since I got my first MIDI gear in 1995 I always dreamed of "the ultimate hardware sequencer"
Over the years boxes have come and gone and I spend sometimes more or sometimes less time in my studio. I was pretty happy with my RS7000 but always had an eye on other SEQ's. I had the Manikin Schrittmacher and the Genoqs Nemo on my wanna try list, and I had on the very back of my mind that there was a site about a remarkable DIY SEQ on the net.
As I work in the automotive industry it became that since the end of 2008 I have more time to spend for
my hobby then the years before due to shortend working times. :( ???
So the wish for THE sequencer became stronger than ever before and I was close to get a nemo.
BUT... then i recalled this DIY SEQ found it on the web again, started reading, reading, reading
and things developed.........
http://www.midibox.o...ic,12903.0.html
so since last weekend I have a grin on my face and this BOX on my desk:
INSIDE:
MORE:
Here some Info:
My "want to have it all" frontpanel as well as the rearpanel is from Schaeffer
The wooden box is made by a friend and carpenter out of ALDER wood which is oiled with FLAXOIL
My singlecolour BLM is a slight variation of the duocolour version, I only added a darlington array as sinkdrivers.
These are the buttons I use (more about them, read below):
http://www.sci.com.tw/PRODUCTS/switch/(R13)%20PUSH%20SWITCH/R13-529.htm
All modules came as kits from MIKE
What i learned:
-reading is the key, if I had read more for example I could have avoided building my own bankstick e.g. ;)
I just overlooked that there is a PCB available, only no kit ...silly me.
-Switching polarity on the MIDI sockets is easy.... but also easy to sort out, just compare by using an LED
with some commercial gear.
-Optocouplers are lousy little bastards! >:( I became just anothert victim.. mine passed all tests, but messed up SW upload! My bugy opto even works fine on the thru port of the IIC module as the signal gets amplified, but messes up the midi in -> note numbers and Velocity values get randomly changed!
-The "melt isolation" wire i used on the matrix is tricky, it takes lots of heat to get a propper connection
so there is the danger to overheat the components. I fried 5 buttons, 1LED, 1Diode and had lots of non
conducting connections, whereas I had not a single problem on the PCBs.
-The buttons I use seem to have problems with production tolerances, I guess I was lucky to have only 2 or 3 "sticky / rough" blue ones while I had to repalace almost half of the yellow ones due to the bad feel.
If the buttons show up to be a cause of trouble I might disassemble them and use them as luxury cap system for tact swiches.
-ALPS encoder STEC16B04 743420 unequal VOITI + SOUNDWELL encoder ?
I got my encoders from www.distrelec.de and had to discover that they only decrease values when
connected as described. I got mine to work by switching ground and highest din pin.
-Watch the spec's of the displays, I had to use additional resistors and a different potentiometer e.g.
Finally, I hope I can give at least a little of all that I recieved back:
CONTENT.jpg 30.61K
69 downloads
CHAINREACTOR-SHARE.zip 627.2K
41 downloadsEDIT: fixed attachment tag
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jaw dropped... love the case the wiring and also great layout. congrats!
