A Newbie's feelings

[neodjandre]

Hello and once again well done for this amazing project and delightful community. As a newbie I've been browsing all sorts of different topics, flicked through various schematics and diagrams and more or less dream of starting my own midibox64 project one day (solely for traktor dj studio use).

There is a lot of information scattered around but what I didn't find is a detailed tutorial which comprises of all the necessary information to build your own midibox from scratch to the finishing touches.

What I would like to see is a seperate section where users like me can download mini tutorials in pdf files preferably (which can easily contain pictures and text and even more easily to edit).

So there should be a seperate pdf file titled: "Building your own case" which details all the necessary steps for building an enclosure, best places to buy, tips and hints etc..

Another pdf file should be "Mounting all components on a board"

people should start creating this mini pdf  tutorials on those matters that they are particularly aware off. The most important thing is to collate all the information together. At a last note i found some schematics for midibox64 in ucaps and some others here and some more in wiki ...

I think this idea should be put forward, so that in two years time i would have all the necessary information and available time to build my dream machine ..

[illogik]

Hi,

In fact most of the thing you discribe you can find either on the ucapps.de website (choose what application to build, start reading there and follow/read ALL the relevant links as you progress), in the WIKI; never finished/always growing, this is the place where midiboxers can publish their info on building/programming etc.) and  the forum; use the search function to see if there is any information usefull for answering questions that you have (i know there is; look in tips&tricks) and if you can't find it, you can always ask the helpful people that roam around these pages...

of course it would be less work if everything was in the same place (that's of course the idea of the wiki), but you'll be surprised what other things you learn when you are searching for one thing.

cheers, marcel

[arumblack]

I had considered doing this for the sid project, but I havent the time to start yet....If there is enough interest I could perhaps try harder to find the time....

[neodjandre]

Obviously, you have a very interested person like me but I don't know whether that gives you enough motive to undertake the proposed task. I guess we should start a big campaign, re-organise the main site (ucaps -it surely needs some improvements; on the contrary the portal is just beautifully organised) and make more ppl get into this project.

Since you wanted to start a tutorial on Sid, I would suggest to make it a bit more generic in order to apply to other midibox projects so that it can actually be useful for everyone.

Once again, people like me are looking for all those little things that the big cheeses in here take for granted. OK, I think I will be able to solder some wires but for example I cannot figure out (unless I ask) how to mount the different components rigidly on the front panel. I would expect to see things like that in future tutorials, if that ever happens ..

otherwise be prepared to be immensed with literally hundreds of questions in the near future .. dont say I didn't warn you :)

[arumblack]

otherwise be prepared to be immensed with literally hundreds of questions in the near future .. dont say I didn't warn you :)

Well, that is how most of us learned and still do. And I don't consider myself a big cheese around here.

The sid is the only project I have worked on so far. As it seems to be one of the more popular ones I thought it would be good to do a "pretty much complete guide". No tutorial could possibly contain everything or answer all questions. The forum is still the most valuable resource. But I figured it could be handy to have , all in one file, all the documentation, diagrams , and instructionsFor how to build the certain projects. Especially for ppl like me who don't have internet acces at home.

I don't think anyone could write the definitive guide to building a case for your project, That could be a book to itself, and I don't have time to write a book.

Of course this could take some amount of time, so my advice for now would be to thouroghly explore ucapps.de. Everything is there, ppl just miss things alot.

We are always glad to answer questions here ;)

AB

[jimhenry]

There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.

More on topic: There are 2 kinds of people in the world, those who can write documentation and don't need it, and those who need documentation and can't write it. Actually there is a third kind, people who need documentation but won't read what's there. That last group does a lot to discourage the first group.

There are very few people who enjoy writing documentation. When I managed software development groups, even getting people who were being paid for what they did to write documentation was the hardest thing. Can't say I blamed them, writing good documentation is a very difficult thing to do and not all that satisfying. When you are done all you have is a document that tells you stuff you already knew. When you tackle an engineering project you wind up with something you can use that didn't exist before.

So don't hold your breath or delay your MIDI Box project waiting for documentation. Ask your hundreds of questions and write a document based on the answers you get and what you learn as you work on your project. When you are done you'll have a useful device and a useful document that you give back to the MIDI Box community. The idea that makes a project like this work is that everyone does the things that they enjoy doing and shares their work with the community. So if you enjoy documentation, that can be your contribution to this engineering potluck called the MIDI Box.

[havensole999]

hi all. as a somewhat newbie myself, i understand to a small extent as to what he is going through, but as everyone else has said, its all there if you're willing to look and put the pieces together. i can't count how many hours and full days i've spent going through all the different forums and spec pages trying to gather the information myself, but that, in my opinion, did alot more good that just reading a detailed descripion. in looking through all the hundreds of forums and spec pages, my once very uniformed idea became a much larger scope on all the different possibilities there are.

i am planning on writing a document on building my sid keyboard (yes.... keyboard) when i finish collecting the money for it as well as my midibox64 controlled PC synth, my midi studio mixer, midi live mixer, and the midiboxFM synth when it is done. Just for poeple like you who want more information, and people like me who just needed a little clearing up of some basic elements and easy and cheap ways of getting it all in a box. also planned is a detailed decription of my cool illumination panel designs. anyway, all this soon.

[neodjandre]

OK, I have put myself together and decided to start the question avalanche quite shortly. I reckoned that the best way to do it, is to start small topics on different stages of the production, so for example the first topic I will open will be sth like:  --== Computer Design & Panel cutting ==--

notice the signs --== ==-- , I guess this is a good way to distinguish between my topics, so that other newbs will find them easily (even better is to open a new section just for these mini topics; if this happens then I am willing to go into as much detail as I can and include pictures of my designs and everything and at the same time get a better feedback from all you guys). Of course I have to warn you that I will be moving very very slowly (unfortunately I am lacking very much of time, if I could I would buy some extra time :)). I foresee that my project will not to be completed before two years time.

I hope that the mods will have a look at my proposal, otherwise if this is not possible, I will start my first topic in the section I find most relevant!

trying to build up some momentum,

Ash

[nme30]

i must admit, even tho in comparison to what everyone else is doing, wat i wanna do seems way simpler, but ive got too many questions at this stage so i gonna try gather more info ...(lurker present) i know fuck all bout schematics and all that othergoodstuff, all i know is i wanna make a midi box ;D, looking forward to learning

[stryd_one]

I agree with both sides of this story... The doco you need can be hard to find. It can also be beneficial to spend time reading as you journey towards gathering the info you need.

IMO the point of all of this is that doco doesn't write itself. If you find yourself saying "Geez, I wish that info were more easy to come by", then maybe it's time to pitch in and write some doco yourself?

I don't think there's any need for noisey message topics though. That might make them easier to find, but it could also serve to annoy :\ What would be better if your aim is to be easily located is to make your own instructions on the wiki. You can chat about it on the forum, and then compile your learnings into a wiki page, or even just add links to your forum threads into the wiki under your user gallery page.