New Midi motherboard for Fatar SL 880

[Gluca]

Morning!

I'm new in this forum.

I've subscribed because i'd like to return to life my glorius Fatar keyboard.

After the internal midi controller died, i'm considering to realize my own device,

i'm skilled enough to deal with firmawre, pcbs and so on.

Are there anyone in this forum that could give me some tipps in order

to speed up the development process?

 

Bye,

Gluca.

 

 

[FantomXR]

Sure! What kind of tipps do you need?

Best,
Chris

[Gluca]

 

 Basically two questions:

 Does already exist on the net some sort of to develop at home the midi controller?

 I mean ribbon cables,  pcbs

Would be possibile to use the fit the raspberry PI using only a sampling circuit on the

keyboard side?

 

G.  

   

 

 

 

[goyousalukis]

Have you gone through this page yet?

http://ucapps.de/midibox_kb.html

The MidiBox stuff doesn't use a Raspberry Pi - it uses a dedicated processor - the STM32F4 is recommended.

[Gluca]

 

>>The MidiBox stuff doesn't use a Raspberry Pi - it uses a dedicated processor - the STM32F4 is recommended

Yes, i've been reading something, however i'm considering the opportunity to do some with the Raspi.

That is, using the Raspi Spi channels along with DIO_MATRIX Module as external interface to my keyboard.

In that case, i could use directly the syntetizers normally embedded in a linux distribution. 

What do you say about that?

G.

 

 

[goyousalukis]

Well, my take on that would be, if you are willing to write all the code yourself and implement it, then go for it. If you want to use something already written and tested, then go with the MB KB. You could always still throw a Pi into it and send the midi out to it for the synthesizer. It seems to me that your would be re-inventing the wheel. I don't think you would get any performance benefit from a PI, but maybe someone who knows more than me will chime in. A STM32F4 with a core board will cost a bit more than a PI, but it will be ready to go.

For the record, I have not done a midibox kb project. Many years ago, I did make a simple midibox project that would react to 8 foot switches and send midi note signals.

[Gluca]

 

In terms of code effort, my aim is to revork an existing code like this:

http://jack-keyboard.sourceforge.net/

And to create the software layer to use my real keyboard rather than

a virtual one.

 

[goyousalukis]

I guess if it were my keyboard, I would prefer to use the MB-KB and make it a regular midi keyboard again. Then I could hook it up to whatever midi stuff I wanted, including a softsynth on a raspberry pi. That being said, I hope it works out for you!

[silicium]

I have this keyboard too, it still works but I started thinking about maintenance.
I can write 8052 asm code easily. Some microcontrollers may be powerful enough. There are fast ones from Silabs (C8051F...) , Microchip/Atmel (AT89LP...) Maxim/Dallas (DS89C430). Then how to calculate key velocity with two contacts ? It seems too expensive to wire each contact to a pin with capture timer, as it would need a lot of slaves scanned by a master that sends MIDI messages. What is the way to do it in software (with external memory if needed, thatcan be accessed without stretched bus cycle), scanning the whole 88 keys each millisecond ?

[ilmenator]

Check the repository, there is a MIDIbox solution for this from which you can take some code inspiration!

[Gluca]

 Hallo!

 I've  just done my early verification with raspi + spi matrix converter,

it seems to work.

To syntetize the midi stream i've been using qsynth on the Raspi.

I'd like to upload a shot oh my current workbench, but i was unsuccessful.

G.

 

 

 

[Gluca]

In attachment the Workbench!

[Gluca]

Hallo?!

If you have any interest in sharing the details of this

project, let me know.

G.