8 LED Bargraph

[borntob4]

Hi folks. I'm searching for a 8 LED segment bargraph with 8 separated LEDs in one housing (with all LEDs on 8 seprate LED should be recognized). Does anyone have a suggestion concerning dealers or manufacturers.

Measurements similiar to 0.2X2.4 inches or 5x60mm

Thanks a lot

borntob4

[Guest JimCook]

Mouser carries Kingbright bar graph arrays.  They are 58mm overall length and and 7mm wide.  There are twelve LEDs in the array but you could simply not wire four of them.  Of course that effectively shortens the length of the bar graph.  They also have a model that is the same length but 11mm wide that have 20 LEDs.  You could use every other LED.

What are you using for drawbars?

[borntob4]

You've got me.  I want to build an userinterface for Native Instruments B4. But I like to see the current drawbar setting on the keyboard (similiar to Nord Electro). Don't want to move my head in order to look at the screen. I'm a little bit lazy, you know  ;)

Best and thanks for your help

borntob4

[Guest JimCook]

Here's what I'm going to do, I think you'll like it!   :D

Use encoders turned sideways and mounted under the panel.  Thumbwheel-like knobs about the same width as a drawbar knob pass up through slots in the panel.  Space them as closely as possible to the same spacing as B3 drawbars.  Mount a small bargraph LED display just above the "draw-wheel".  

The bargraph changes with preset selections.  Push the draw-wheel away from you to push the draw bar in (and turn off LED segments).  Pull the draw-wheel towards you to pull the draw bar out.  With the draw-wheels, one or more harmonics can be added as slowly or as fast as desired!   ;D

I think this scheme is a lot better than the in-out buttons on the Nord's virtual drawbars!

[borntob4]

Sounds good, but I will use real Drawbars with the AIN instead. Have all 24 of them already prepared. Bought them at ebay.com. But I have to fix the "programming problem" with MIOS first. What device are you planing to control? Native Instruments' B4 aswell ?

best

borntob

[Guest JimCook]

I'm going to design it to control the NI B4, however, I have an old(er) Yamaha P-series piano with a Hammond-like organ.  Unfortunately, there is only one slide pot to set one harmonic at a time.  Not very handy...  The MIDI implementation easily supports external control of each drawbar independantly.  The built-in tremolo is Leslie-like (poorly...) but no accel.  I'm going to code slow and fast speed settings and let Midibox accelerate and decelerate the speed settings.  After all that is working then I'll consider the B4.

I just wish my P-150 had a way to disable the piano action...

Are your faders motorized?

[borntob4]

Motorized ? That would be awesome, but I'm not planning to do so. Sounds a little bit to complicated, especially with getting a good mechanic working on the real drawbars. No, I think with the LED bargraphs displaying my drawbar settings I don't need motorized drawbars. I would leave out the LED in that case.

Best

borntob4

[Guest JimCook]

The motorized idea would be nice, cause the presets would just yank the drawbar faders into the preset position and then you could still pull/push to "fine tune".   :D  Besides the expensive faders, I believe the current midibox hardware is limited to eight motorfaders per core.  So with only a single core, only one manual could have motorized drawbars and one drawbar on that manual couldn't be motorized.  :(

If you come up with a good drawbar design let me know.  I had thought of simply getting strips of aluminum from a hobby shop and dry transfering the numbers onto the strip.  Then I'd figure out some way to attach the strip to the fader.  The end knobs I'd cut from walnut and maple to match the colors on the Hammond drawbars.  I was going to use my router to shape the knobs in strips then cut the knobs to length.  

What's needed is MidiBoxB4...  ;D

Jim

[borntob4]

" What's needed is MidiBoxB4..."

That's for sure.

Concerning Fader or Drawbars I found a good solution. I want my midibox only to control NI B4, so I don't need faders. They are expensive and difficult to attach with something similiar like a drawbar. What I did, was pretty cheap and THE REAL THING:

Buy used drawbars at ebay instead. There a some dealers who sell old drawbars from M100 or M3-organs.

for example:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2570624578&category=16219

search for hammond and drawbar, but keep away from the big sets of B3, C3 and A100 with the 4 sets with 9 drawbars each and 2 for the bass. They will get pretty expensive cause they are rare and an often needed spare parts.

You need 2 of them to get all 24 bars. I spent 10 $ for each of them. Clean them up a little bit (especially the busbars) and reorganize them to have 2 9 drawbars sets side by side and the 6 for the bass separatly. Then you have to solder 8 resistors to the 9 bars (one 1.2K ohm resistor soldered to 2 busbars) and hook Vss to the last and Vdd to the first and bar and use the drawbars with the AIN-Module.

By using a drawbar you will increase the value of the drawbars resistor by 1.2k ohm and the pic will increase the matching Continious Controller by 16, that is one position of the drawbar of the B4 further out or in.

Did I make myself clear. I will look for a explaination concerning the resistor-thing.

When the drawbar (db) is in Position 0 you have 0 ohm, if the db is in position 9, you have 9.6k ohm. And the PIC of your MIDIbox will "translate" that to a midicommand.

Maybee I'l find someone with a digital camera, so that I can make some pictures of the modification.

I will figure that out.

Best

borntob4

[borntob4]

if I would life in the US, I would buy something like that

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3711360695&category=16219

and be the happiest man in the world. but these keyboards are to heavy=expensive to ship to Europe.

what a pitty.

But maybee it is interesting for you, Jim ? You get a real warerfall keyboard with the big set of dbs. Looks cool.

good night it's getting late

borntob4

[Guest JimCook]

Thanks for that e-bay link!  I'll watch the bidding!  ;) Sacto is only a few hundred miles south of me so the shipping won't be bad at all.  Oh!  The waterfall keyboard...  Such a joy to play compared with trying a palm gliss on my P-150 piano action  :-[  That would be a sweet single manual MidiboxB4 rig.  ;D

You know, I know of a junk organ collector just a couple miles from me with an entire warehouse of old Hammond parts.  I know he's advertised on e-bay from time to time.  He's getting along in years and usually just works on Saturday's.  Maybe I'll wander over there this weekend and see what's going on.  I was very tempted to buy an M-3 he was willing to sell for $300...  But, my wife would throw me and it out into the street!  :o

Thanks for the tip!

[borntob4]

I have sent you a private message. Just in case it is stuck somewhere in the middle:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=16219&item=3717302671&rd=1

best

borntob4

By the way: I have ordered a 10 LED bar graph made by Kingbright but they are too tiney for my project. I need something more visuable but the 20 LED bar graph are too expensive (in my opinion)

[Guest JimCook]

Did you check Mouser for LED bargraphs, Andreas?  They have Xicon 10 LED displays about 10x25mm and 7x60mm.  These are only one color but I know I've seen the 10x25mm type in three colors, I think from DigiKey.  The three color displays appeal to me 'cause the "drawbar" would be green for positions 1-3, yellow for 4-6 and red for positions 7-8.

Did you ever think about using 9 7-segment displays and show the drawbar position that way?  Instead of:

===

===

===

=== ___ ___

You'd have:

888 000 000

[borntob4]

I really like it the way clavia did it with the nord. This kind of display seems to be very obvious and eays to handle. It like the "displaying device" to big. A small LCD or the 10x25mm LEDs are too small for me. 7X60mm might be enough.

Honestly speaken, I don't know what to do now as I know that displaying drawbar settings after a preset change is not possible.  The LEDs are a desireable thing to have.

It have to think about it all.

Best

andreas

[Guest JimCook]

I think the 25mm bargraphs would work well.  They're cheap and drawbars only move about 40mm anyway.  I'd like to see them lined up just above the drawbars aligned on the same spacing.  Maybe tilted up a little towards the player.

The only thing I can think of for the B4 presets being displayed on the LED bargraph, is to program them into MIDIBoxB4 as well and when a preset is selected through MBB4, the MB turns on the LEDs and not B4.  

Either that or, build the MBB4 application to include presets and just forget about using the B4's presets.  Use B4 only as the sound engine and let MB send the preset drawbar positions.  In fact, I think it would be a lot easier to program presets with MIOS than they are programmed in B4.  Imagine just moving the drawbars to any position you want, pressing a "Store" button and then press the preset button you want that position stored to.  When a preset is selected, MB spits out all nine drawbar positions in a burst to B4.