Setlist program change mini-controller

[emerson]

I'm getting ready to dabble in all of this wonderful hardware hacking after reading and reading for the past several weeks.  I'm going to be getting my feet wet with just slapping together the JDM programmer and a core module, probably will build a MIDImon so that I can actually see something happening.

But I have several custom projects in mind, and I'm wanting to solicit feedback on how best to go about doing this;  I'm sure it's going to take some PIC programming, which doesn't scare me, but I'm wanting to get some direction first.

The first and most important project is that I want to put together a device that does the work of manging setlists for us.  Specifially, I'm wanting it to have memorized a set of patch changes (and associated MIDI channels for bonus points) in a certain order, and have buttons / footswitches / analog ins of some sort for increment / decrement.

That is, I tell it that the "setlist" goes:

program 32, channel 2;  program 10, channel 1;  program 2, channel 2...

And the increment and decrement switches will walk up and down that list as needed.  Sense?

I'm visualizing putting this into a one rackspace box with an LED display (like the MMC display) showing me the current 'step,' channel, and program number.  The programming UI would consist of a simple up/down pair of buttons for each of those, so that I go to step 3, for instance, and use the up/down buttons near the channel and program display to set up what that step does.  And maybe a 'save' button to write it off to a bankstick.

Does all that make sense?  I'm thinking I'd need a core module, a DIN module, some variation of the MMC LED output thingie from the MIDImon, a bankstick or two, and not much else apart from some custom PIC code.  Is this something I should do with the old world stuff, or should I start examining MIOS for this kind of thing?

Thanks in advance for any pointers you can give.

[TK.]

Hi Emerson,

Cyan is working on a similar MIDI controller, based on MIOS. Here a link to his homepage: http://home.arcor.de/cyan_0660/sms/

and here the discussion about the controller:

http://www.midibox.org/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=german;action=display;num=1041710259

Unfortunately both sources are in german only, but you could use http://babelfish.altavista.com in order to translate the texts.

My suggestion: since you want to program the controller by yourself, use a PIC18F and MIOS. This will reduce the effort a lot, because the most important routines have been already integrated into the operating system, so that you can concentrate on the main routines. Also developing makes much more fun, since the bootstrap loader allows the upload of new code within a few seconds (instead of some minutes).

Required hardware:

CORE module, stuffed with PIC18F and 10MHz crystal

DIN module for buttons

DOUTX4 for the MMC display (code example will be provided soon)

As much BankSticks as you want :)

Best Regards, Thorsten.

[emerson]

Oh, excellent, looks like he's doing -exactly- what I'm on about.  Thanks tons for the pointer;  I'll be back in lurk mode now for a while as I get together more bits and things, but I'm sure I'll pop back up with some MIOS questions in a few weeks.

Thanks tons!  (*wave)