[ssp]

well as im waiting for parts to arrive for me to finish the bpm controller i decided to build something while waiting.

what i needed was a nice compact little midi machine control unit with a few rotaries, buttons and a single 100mm fader. so i had a spare core and a spare dinx4 board and i decided to use them to build the unit.

i went for an okw comtec case , some slim line alps 100mm faders, a 16x2 lcd and lots of jsr illuminated dual pole switches, some frosted domes some are light pipes.
it took a while to solder up the boards and get the placing right and then transfer it all into solidworks. in solidworks i did the face layout and saved this as a dxf for use in illustrator for the front labels.

i printed off a line drawing off the face onto some sticky backed paper a4 and placed it onto the case.

it took me about 30 mins to do the drilling into the case , and cut the holes and do all the countersinking for the bolts.

i had to learn how to code meta events while doing this as i needed an mmc transport that put out mmc sysex commands, i got really stuck with this and fortunately had lots of help from thorsten, i have to behonest im still unsure on some things but im getting there and understanding the meta coding.

im glad to say all the functions work fine and the midi in and out is running great with dumps to and fore the core.

anyway, connected to logic pro9 it is a godsend, and the good thing is that if i get two more of these cases and stick 4 faders and some buttons and encoders in i can make the unit expandable with a single cable linking each box with rear ports. the size on this case, its high quality abs and the fact its not too big make it an excellent choice for projects and its a case i will be using again soon.

here are the pictures as usual.

case


fader


switch and encoders layout


connection test


rats nest


in the case


continued :

[ssp]

first led test, i put better resistors in parallel and they are brighter now


no label face


no label face leds on ( the top left button turns the leds on or off in the switches)


case with labels on

[Labelwhore]

That's gorgeous. Great work man!

[frailn]

Nice little project, SSP. I think it should added to user project list on ucapps.de and the wiki. I'm curious to know more of how this works. I understand the RWD, FWD, STOP, PLAY and RECORD functions for recording sound using DAW software. Tell us more about the other functions.

I plan on using Ardour or Rosegarden soon enough. I can see where this little puppy would come in handy.

[ssp]

well the mmc commands are only 5 of the standard list of commands available. the transport only has 5 as its for use with logic pro 9, also you can use those mmc commands with any mmc compatible equipment, so say you have a laptop running logic or pro tools etc and also an external multitrack unit etc you can using a midi merger take the single out put from this and then busss it to the equipment. one thing that may be added is a foot switch board with the same mmc commands mapped to it for use while playing keyboards.

the 8 buttons above the transport can have the rest of the mmc commands mapped to them or be used as assignable command buttons for logic commands.
the 4 encoders are also assignable to any part, plugin or even the zoom functions for the screens in logic pro. the master fader can be assigned to the main master fader in logic for a single fader control for the piece your working on, or it can be switched between tracks as an individual fader.

the top 4 buttons are the menu system, the 4 below that are the other 4 menu buttons that are not used as often.

if you put a 10 pin port on the back you could in theory have another case with 8 slimline faders, some buttons and rotaries and make a fader expander for this.
you have a dinx4 board in the case with an ainx1 board, you can have several this way by having an in and out port to cascade the units.

This post has been edited by ssp: 02 October 2010 - 08:46