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MIDIbox of the Week: Station MIDI controller by Ander


TK.
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INSANE... :drool: I love it.

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Please share your secret of how the switch "cap" works!

You're pressing a fairly large translucent rectangle. What is it made of? How is it supported?

Maybe something like this would be a great alternative construction for the BLM and other MIDIbox control surfaces.

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Hi,

regarding the buttons: Its an acrylic button I had made for me, 6mm of opaque acrylic plastic. It fits directly into the case and is secured by a small notch so it cannot fall out. One side is supported by a small piece of elastic foam, the other side has the pushbutton below it, so that the led can sit in the middle. Quite simplistic, actually, but it works very well so far. Next time I would put notches on both sides and tink MUCH more about the mechanics before building them, but as long as it works now I am happy :).

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Thanks Wilba for posting the pictures. BTW, this was all hand-soldered by me.... Very meditative.

I have made a quick drawing of the button mechanism. It works quite well, you can push on it everywhere on the surface and it activates the button. I selected a pushbutton with only 150g of force.

post-5091-127567243274_thumb.png

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Thanks Ander for the diagram... it is definitely something I am interested in trying... It might be possible to use Ponoko to laser cut 3mm acrylic and glue two pieces together to make parts with notches.

I hope eventually you will show us what is on the PCB, and how they are all connected.

It looks like you made a multipurpose PCB that can be either a Core32 or some kind of integrated DIN/DOUT/control surface.

This should be MIDIbox of the Year :thumbsup:

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WOW, very impressive :thumbsup:

is there a place where we can learn more details about this fantastic box? Is it based on MIOS8/MIOS32, what software is it running, schematics, what PC software are you using it with, what's the UI concept, what are all these beautiful buttons there for etc? Questions questions questions :drool:

S

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It looks like you made a multipurpose PCB that can be either a Core32 or some kind of integrated DIN/DOUT/control surface.

Well spotted ;) Your are right, the PCB is the same for all modules. It can hold either one encoder or two pushbuttons in the same area, or any kind of sensor with analog output. One PCB can hold 16 pushbuttons or 8 encoders/sensors, or any combination. Actually, one module consists of all the necessary PCB stuff for

- one STM32 core

- 2 DINs (in a SMD version)

- one step down converter (24V to 5V)

- three driver chips to drive 16 RGB LEDs (PCA9635). This is a design of my own, I do not use DOUT modules

The core parts are of course not soldered in on every module, but of course this one PCB design made developing and producing the PCB much cheaper. Its actually 4 Layers, 16 RGB LEDs need quite a lot of routing...

Edited by wackazong
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Quite impressive work on those PCB's, well done on making such flexible modular system!

Guess it took quite some placing/routing time to get it all right.

- Why the white soldermask (=expensive), because of reflecting leds, or?

- Why not change on one of the 2 "DIN&I2C" connectors, the MISO and MOSI, so u don't need crossing cables to link them?

- Why use such oversized (=expensive) resistor arrays, u would done with >0.125W?

- Are those solder jumpers to select adresses?

- Your stackup, did u use 2 routing layers and 2 ground/power planes?

Greetz Joost

Edited by overdrive
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Quite impressive work on those PCB's, well done on making such flexible modular system!

Guess it took quite some placing/routing time to get it all right.

1) Why the white soldermask (=expensive), because of reflecting leds, or?

2) Why not change on one of the 2 "DIN&I2C" connectors, the MISO and MOSI, so u don't need crossing cables to link them?

3) Why use such oversized (=expensive) resistor arrays, u would done with >0.125W?

4) Are those solder jumpers to select adresses?

5) Your stackup, did u use 2 routing layers and 2 ground/power planes?

Greetz Joost

Yeah, the routing was difficult. I did it with kicad, it took me i think about 5 attempts.

Regarding your questions:

1) yes, correct. White soldermask is just a tiny bit more expensive than green at http://www.multipcb.de/. I can really recommend them by the way.

2) I don't get that, sorry. I have all module connected in one row, therefore there is one input and one output on each PCB. It connects the DIN and the I2C bus (for the LEDs)

3) No, 0.125W would not be enough. Each array drives 16 LEDs. Unfortunaltely, the PC!9635 requires resistors, I would have liked a part with constant current regulator, but I did not find one that suited me.

4) Yes, they determine the I2C address of the driver chip, which has to be different for each chip. There are three on each PCB, one for each color.

5) Yes, more or less. one signal layer, one ground layer, a mixed power/additional PWM layer and one layer only for PWM (of the LEDs)

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