My design

[Guest durak]

Hi!

I just found about this concept and I'm excited.  :)

I came up with a design, I'm thinking of using it with Reason so I made it with the Reason mixer in my mind.

8 faders

56 pots

46 knobs

I read the limitations of midibox64 but I'd like to be sure that I didn't do any mistakes. So can this design be made or is there something wrong with it?

I want to do it as cheap as possible, so I'm not gonna use any fancy parts. I would appreciate it if someone could estimate how much this is going to cost?

I live in Finland so I'm going to order all parts from some european vendor and do the case from wood myself.

Thanks!

[uclaros]

Hi durak!

Nice panel you draw there, BUT

I'm not sure that the automations you'll want to record on REASON will be on the mixer!

I mean, you should think about making the layout of your favourite instruments in reason , like the filters or envelopes of subtraktor or malstrom...

Expensive parts are the lcd about 20-30 euros, each pot I'd say 0,3 , less for the buttons...

caps for the pots could be another 0,3-0,5 each..

prices for the pcb you can find at smash-tv's...

all those very roughly...

uclaros

[Guest durak]

Hi!

Thanks for reply. The reason why I thought of making the controller suit the mixer is that I plan on doing some dub music with it. So I'll mainly use it for the final mixing of the track in real time.

[pay_c]

First the costs: It starts at about 90 Euros (LCD, 64 Pots, 32 Knobs, 32 LEDs) - all cheap parts like ebay or so-  and ends at about 200-400 euros (big LCD, new pots, bought frontpanel,case,PCBs and so on).

Naturally you *could* go up with the price to whereever.

The design: If you value the price & time (especially the time!) which you have to put in there, making a veeery specific design like that should really be overthought well. You could also make a more flexible setup and use flipover-like transparent foils or whatever to change that whole thing to other instruments.

Suggestion: As you will use it mainly for the mixing I would make 8 channels (not 7). This way, you can still do good mixing stuff, but your design is easily adapted to other apps. Perhaps even leave out those faders (theyre little expensive - if you dont buy the last crap).

Hope I could help.

Greets  :)

[uclaros]

Oh yes!

Faders!

don't go for the plastic crap ones that cost about a euro(here in greece).

I suggest using the metal cased ones although their price is about triple!..Their feeling is great!

[Guest durak]

Hi!

Thanks for all the help!

That was just a quick design, so I'll be thinking about it more before I build it. I'll think about the arragement  and number of pots etc. again but I'll keep the mixer style still cause that's how I want it.

New question. How tall is the midibox system under and above the panel? Cause I found a really neat briefcase to fit the system in, but it's pretty shallow.

Here's a picture:

So will it fit in there without problems?

[pay_c]

Nope. Not if you dont use a veeery compact design. And for that you need quite a bit experience.

Check out how big other midiboxes are (on the UCApps site). 10 cm in the whole is a little to narrow, I think.

Big problem: The cables! You have over 50 pots there, not speaking about the other stuff.

Cablescablescables...  :)

[uclaros]

well, I don't think it's that bad!

My midibox has about those sizes!

you'll just have to organize things very well...

[Guest durak]

Hi everyone!

I decided that I'll use the whole space of the briefcase for modules, and mount a panel on top of it. I think I can manage with the ~10 cm space.

Anyway, I came up with a better design, there's still some led and button placements I'm not sure about but this is pretty much the design I'm going to use.

I have a few questions about it.

First, is the lcd contrast pot needed? I've seen many designs with out it, but put it there to be sure.

Secondly, what kind of buttons should I use? I understood that the way the button acts can be changed in the software, so probably buttons that return to their original state after releasing them, no?

Thirdly, how should I program the buttons to use buttons like these in reason:

I couldn't get it to move when I tried with virtual midibox. What I want it to do is to move one step ahead with every push, just like clicking with mouse in reason does.

And mute and solo etc. buttons. I got them only to ON position with vmidibox, but couldn't get them back to off position after that. I tried the on/off, toggle etc. modes.

Last question, kind of totally off-topic, but as I have a thread here made I'll ask first here and if I don't get answers then I'll make a new thread on the correct forum.

About Reichelt. I understand they ship to foreign countries too? Also I'm having a bit problems with finding parts from their site, could someone tell me part number of/hyperlink to faders and buttons.

I'm going to buy the PCBs from mikes-elektronikseite, pots and knobs for them from a member here and get the PIC as a sample from microchip.com. So I hope I can get everything else from Reichelt, or is there some parts that I can't get form them? Cause as of now I'm already going to have to pay for 3 shippings, and the idea of paying for 4th doesn't really encourage me.

Thanks for all the replies and help still appreciated!  :)

edit:

Are T 250A buttons from reichelt any good?

[atmel_fan]

[Guest durak]

Cool design, but how does that help me?  :-/

[deletemeplease]

Hey durak, firstly i like your design!  Heres a couple of answers to your questions.

Contrast pot - i think it is important, i used a trim pot for mine.  its like a normal pot but instead of being large like normal pots its very small, you can only change values using a screwdriver, this meant i could mount the trimpot directly on my Core module.

About using your box with reason - this is why i built a midi box, but you have to carefully look at the midi implementation chart .pdf manual that should be installed in the same directory as Reason.  Basically, the buttons like the example you used (looks like the mod env routing to me ;)) dont actually perform like buttons. Instead you have to send a CC (continuous controller) value e.g. cc#7 value 127 for the top setting.   I dont think i explained that very well, but if you automate some changes then open up the sequencer lane to view the automation, it should become aparent what value corresponds to which setting.

As for the mute / solo, i'm not sure whats wrong there. I know the mute/solo functions of the mixer need to be triggered by midi keys e.g. C1, again this information can be found in the implementation chart.  If you want the buttons to be triggered so that first press = on, second press = off, you'll need to set that in mios.  I'm afraid i can't help you with that, but i'm sure someone else could ;)

Sorry for the long post, i hope it makes sense!  ::)

[uclaros]

Hi durak,

the thing about the buttons that pulsewidth mentioned:

In your case, let's say that the button is assigned to CC#1. When you send CC#1 values 0-21 it wil change to osc1. When u send values 22-43 it'll change to osc2, 44-65 to mix and so on...

In mios though someone could build a function for a key that does this job.Quite interesting it might be!

A button that each time it's pressed sends previous value + 127/x , where x could be the adjustable number of steps..

[deletemeplease]

uclaros - thanks! I couldnt think of how to explain it properly.

It would be nice to have buttons that do that.. it'd make using reason even more enjoyable.

Just a little off topic, but i've noticed i'm losing more an more time playing with reason. Take last night for example, i just opened it to have a jam for 15 mins at about 9pm.  Then i looked at the clock and it was 3am!!! I can just get lost in there!