Hammond Regent 4172 MIDIfication project

[TK.]

Congratulations! :)

If changing the wiring is too time consuming, I could give you a modified configuration where the 8 DIN pins of each shift register are mirrored

Best Regards, Thorsten.

[^Gecko^]

Thanks TK. It's not necessary though. I fixed them already. I put the shrink tube sleeves on but didn't shrink them until after I tested whether it actually worked. I wired up the rest of the first DIN and went ahead and shrank it.

I ordered 50 feet of ten conductor rainbow ribbon cable from digikey for $21-23 dollars. Fry's is really a bad place to get the stuff, they only have 3ft lengths and plain gray. As you saw in my video, the first DIN is connected with a plain IDE cable. I'm using the rainbow stuff for the rest. I have enough of it to wire the other three DIN's that are installed. I'll deal with the other four DINs later after I get the other core and DOUTs and AIN.

Edited April 27, 2011 by ^Gecko^

[^Gecko^]

Getting it wired up;

Hammond must have liked Tinned Copper, because all of the wires in the organ use it. I love it too; makes soldering a lot quicker! I also like heat shrink tubing, and that you can use a heat gun to nail them all in one shot!

[^Gecko^]

I got the 50ft of cable in the mail today :D Now I just need the rest of the midibox hardware!!

[^Gecko^]

Sorry I haven't posted any updates in a while.

I got the rest of the hardware I ordered from smashtv a few weeks back and everything is soldered together. I haven't even gone to do any other work on it though because I am working at a new job!

I've been hired for a company in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area that installs fire alarm, burglar alarm, access control, and CCTV systems. They already have me working right out with fire alarm stuff, which I'm very much wanting to get in to as a career, etc.

[^Gecko^]

I've finally gotten off my lazy bum and started getting some work done on this thing again! I finished soldering all the leads in for the upper and lower manuals. I mounted the rest of the DINs/DOUTs/AINs, and ran out of IDC connectors. I started working on the tab stops, got all the things on a common ground;

[^Gecko^]

OK now I'm BAFFLED as to how I can hook up my expression pedal to the AIN. I got my multimeter out to see what pins are what on the plug, only to find none of them have variable resistance. I take the thing apart, to find something I think is AMAZING. The pedal uses two optical photoresistors (one looks like it's center-tapped) and an incandescent lamp. The moving part of the pedal has a thing that interrupts the light with a blue filter and a gap that decreased in size as you push the pedal down.

[^Gecko^]

OK I think I have a plan, I'll build a voltage divider circuit. The lamp is a GE1866, which specs out at 6.3 volts. I'll feed it 5volts from a PC power supply and see what the full up resistance gives me, then I dunno, hopefully come up with a resistor to ground to give me 0 to 5 volts for the AIN.

[BigAl]

OK I think I have a plan, I'll build a voltage divider circuit. The lamp is a GE1866, which specs out at 6.3 volts. I'll feed it 5volts from a PC power supply and see what the full up resistance gives me, then I dunno, hopefully come up with a resistor to ground to give me 0 to 5 volts for the AIN.

I'm considering midifying my Hammond Concorde which has the very same expression pedal. Just wondering what you did to adapt you existing expression pedal to work?

Your project loooks almost identical to what I'm contemplating.

Cheers

Allen

[^Gecko^]

WOOO!! I'm back!!

 

It's been a long time coming and I finally have the motivation to continue working on this project again.  I got all the tab stops soldered to ribbon cable and all that needs to be done there is the IDC connectors to plug in to the DINs.  I flipped the organ on its side and got the pedal connections ready to solder up to the ribbon cable and should have that done in the next couple days.

 

Later I'll work on the percussion board.  I'll still need to figure out how to get the pedal wired up, but I don't think it'll be that bad.

 

I'll need to learn how to build a proper program for the cores, since the keys line up with the MIDI notes in a weird way.

[mumblecake]

Glad you still keep going :)

 

Obviously help with wiring will be difficult but I'm sure we can gather some ideas about configuration to make your keys play the right midi notes :)

 

What are they doing and what should they doing? Are you using midibox NG?

[^Gecko^]

No, no midibox NG, just plain STM32.  The keys are just playing the wrong notes, that's all, it starts off low on the upper manual and continues on climbing from the bottom of the lower manual.  I'm sure the answer is super easy, I just need to shift the keys over or assign them all to the proper midi commands is my guess.  The fun one will be assigning the tab stops, as of now they'll just be regular midi notes like everything else.

 

I got the pedals complete last night