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Introduce myself and first Questions about this Project


Fox Mulder
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Hello everyone,

 

<short story> im really happy to find this Project (actually you cant miss it if you search for "DIY midi controllers"). <short story end>

<for all who are trying to beat time down>

Im a hobby musician since my good old 13th and since then I had some really good gear to stay interested in making music. Korg TRITON was my absolute favorite one. Sadly this thing dies a really heroic death some years ago and in all my distress I ended my carrier as a musician since then. I tried actually to reactivate it a couple times with some pure software solutions, like Cubase but the workflow with so called DAWs is like you try to nail a twisted spike with the peak side of the hammer - compared to TRITONS sequencer workflow. At some point I gives up. Later on the new DAW controller become popular and I thought that my days of quietness and darkness are over after all. I tried out some of them but it doesn't feels right - the overall quality is way to poor. The most products are not made from a musician but a businessman point of view. Meanwhile I learned programming for PC machines in c++

and my job forced me to learn SPS and electronics. And the idea  to try to build a DAW controller by myself starts to rise. Especially as I started to explore microcontrollers (atmega) for some other purposes and began to understand how it all works together.

Now im here and I think this will be my starting point.

<some time in the future>

 

There are some questions of course.

First of I cant understand what the purpose of the mios32 because I thought RTOS is the operating system of the new chips and mios32 is like a os from what I read so far.

Secondly my plan I to buy a FATAR keyboard and send the keys over to my host via midi USB - I couldn't find any project that realizes this one. I know there is a 8 pin( or was it 10pin) socket out of FATAR boards but I don't know how it it works.

More questions will follow.

 

Cheers  

 

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Hi,

 

welcome on board! :smile:

 

MIOS32 is more like a framework for MIDI applications. Together with FreeRTOS (the actual operating system which handles the multithreading) it gives you many functions which are typically required, and some kind of abstraction layer which simplifies porting to other microcontrollers.

 

For your plan there are two possibilities: either you start from scratch by learning the MIOS32 basics, then start with the tutorials: http://www.ucapps.de/mios32_c.html

Tutorial #029 explains how to scan a FATAR keyboard, but you shouldn't go into this before reading the first tutorials.

 

Alternatively start with a premade application.

MIDIbox KB matches exactly with that you are looking for: http://www.ucapps.de/midibox_kb.html

MIDIbox NG is more advanced, because it also allows to connect additional control elements: http://www.ucapps.de/midibox_ng.html

 

Last but not least: search in the forum for "fatar" and you will find some postings with additional information.

Maybe somebody has the same keyboard? A picture and/or type number would help...

 

Best Regards, Thorsten.

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There is no picture right now actually, I just start my way, and Fatar is the only keyboard company I know :smile:. Thanks for reply anyway and the hint for the tuts. I tryed figure the structure of this homepage but its kind of hard for me to navigate to the right page.

I will definite start from scratch here cause I wouldn't understand it if I just pick a board and glue it to a masterkeyboard.

First step is to run the Keyboard then add the controls and faders to it.

Another question - How any DAW will recognize the midi device - is there a driver needed for windows? Or does the uController emulate the Midi device so windows uses standard midi driver? If so, are those driver good enough?

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Welcome on board!

 

regarding your other question.

Yes, the standard windows drivers are good enough, you´ll also get four USB MIDI ports for free (16 channels usable on each one!), when attaching a new 32-bit core (like the LPC17 or STM32F4).

Also, should there be problems with windows USB stability, there are alternative free USB drivers for download (offered from Ploytec), which may improve stability a bit. But for a standard workflow (e.g. using Cubase), all is well! :-).

Recommendation: go to ucapps.de and read as much as possible! :-)

 

Many greets,

Peter

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