Which BLM driver to use for front panel?

[Sauraen]

Hi TK,

I just wanted your quick opinion on which BLM driver I should use for the front panel of MIDIbox Quad Genesis.

The panel is compatible with the standard MIDIbox DIN/DOUT/matrix system, and I would just use BLM-X, except there's one difference. There's encoders directly connected to DIN pins (common pin grounded, not in the matrix), but due to front panel layout considerations they're sprinkled in arbitrarily throughout the DIN chain, not on dedicated shift registers at the end.

Is it possible for me to use BLM-X for the buttons and LEDs, and then also attach additional code to the raw DIN handler to read the encoder values? I think I could simply leave those pins unconfigured in the DIN matrix, I don't think that should be a problem. Or can I use the standard encoder handler? Is there any issue with overlapping the encoder handler with the BLM-X handler to read from different pins on the same shift registers?

Thanks,
Sauraen

[latigid on]

Not knowing much on the programming side, I would take the SEQ and MB6582 as examples. It looks like encoders are assigned to blocks of DIN, I'd guess the matrix scanning is more efficient this way. My approach to MBCV is to have a separate SR board because; a) it's an assembly of multiple PCBs, b) there's no room on the CS, c) it makes troubleshooting easier, and d) the data lines are confined to a smaller area and should maintain better signal integrity.

That said, SRIO in MIOS-land seems quite robust and easily spreadable across multiple modules, so if there's a single PCB solution it's probably the thing to do.

Best of luck!

[Sauraen]

I guess it might not have been clear: the hardware is already (mostly) done, the encoders are already in that configuration, and they couldn't have really been put in a separate DIN block due to the density of the front panel. Now I'm just trying to write software to support what I built. I know I could write a custom BLM driver that would support my front panel, but there's no use reinventing the wheel if I can just overlap the BLM-X driver and regular encoder driver.