dcer10 Posted October 23, 2006 Report Share Posted October 23, 2006 Hi Everyone,Im posting a series of photos here I have taken of my midibox sequencer. I hope they will help some people {Im new to electronics so Im NOT claiming anything here is a good way to do it, just how I have done it}. Perhaps people could offer constructive feedback showing better ways to do certain things for people just starting their constructions?I have a lot of photos and videos of the basic board construction, which I will add on request, but Im assuming that everyone has seen all that before so I wont take the time to include those photos.This first series of photos shows the basic layout I chose of the boards inside the rack housing. I bought the rack housing from Jaycar in Adelaide South Australia, and a note to anyone else who may buy the same rack, it does not fit onto TK's designed front panel, the screw holes are in the wrong place and there is not really enough room for the screens properly. I would suggest moving everything on the panel excluding the left hand side section with the layer and track buttons about 1cm to the left and choosing no screw holes if you also use this rack enclosure. It is the deluxe metal 3RU one for about $100 AU.After saying all that, my panel is essentially TK's panel in anodised green with the holes cut for the LTC module in the front cut with my drill press. I had to mess about a lot hacking the front of the rack and screen mounting to eventually get it to fit the rack enclosure, something I wouldnt wish on anyone!I used the standard blank rear panel which came with the enclosure and drilled out the holes for the CV+Gate, midi, sync etc with my drill press.Featured in one photo is the Dout {unconnected} and antoher shows the Aout {Unconnected} Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dcer10 Posted October 23, 2006 Author Report Share Posted October 23, 2006 These next photos show the rear panel, I noticed its something not mentioned on the site much so I hope it adds some value to people looking to build a MIOS device. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dcer10 Posted October 23, 2006 Author Report Share Posted October 23, 2006 I will skip ahead as connecting the boards etc isnt much to look at and is show in other posts a lot, so here are some images up close of the button boards. I made them from vectorboard, cut them with a hacksaw, drilled them and most importantly, after adding spacers, soldered the buttons and LED's to the board while the board is mounted into the panel to get the right fit. If you try other ways as I did to begin with nothing will line up properly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dcer10 Posted October 23, 2006 Author Report Share Posted October 23, 2006 As you can only attach 4 pictures per post heres some more as a part of the last post. These also show the mounting of the button boards with the LCDs etc on the rear. You dont have to do it but I found it easier to make rails to connect the buttons and LED's to for the ground leg only which then only have to be soldered once to the DIN/DOUT boards. I used fencing wire from the local hardware shop to make the rails. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dcer10 Posted October 23, 2006 Author Report Share Posted October 23, 2006 Heres a couple of photos of the connections to the DIN boards. I started using thicker wire, which is too bulky and easily breaks under its own weight at the solder join, so then I moved to ribbon cable which is ugly but much easier to work with and seems to hold better. I stripped the wire ends and soldered to them, then made little hooks by rolling the soldered end in a rolling tool {wrapping it around the end of a pen works too} and then soldering to the SIL pin on the board and putting the hook on, and adding a small bit of solder to join the two. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dcer10 Posted October 23, 2006 Author Report Share Posted October 23, 2006 Heres some more showing the panel fitting to the enclosure with the wires connected. The inside boards easily detach from the panel for future work on them. The LHS board is seperate as it is screwed in later so it will fit. The reason why the wires are a little longer than they need {which is not a good thing} is that I needed to lay the panel flat to solder it before fitting, so I needed a bit of extra length for them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dcer10 Posted October 23, 2006 Author Report Share Posted October 23, 2006 Quickly back to the insides these pictures show the rear panels midi connections, the memory switch {for internal and external memory connected by an Svideo connector on the rear panel}. Also shown is the 1/4" jack connectors for the CV/Gate outputs {currently waiting on my new power supply for +12v,-12V,9v DC to power the Aout and core} and a close up of the populated Aout board , as well as another image showing the front panel without the inner PCB mounted. A tip when ordering the panel, measure the width of your encoder pots before hand and change the hole sizes to suit in front panel designer, same goes with buttons. I didnt do that so the holes are too big. If they were the right size I could have avoided the inner PCB and gone for all panel mount switches. Sorry the order of the pics is getting a little messed up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dcer10 Posted October 23, 2006 Author Report Share Posted October 23, 2006 The first signs of life from the LHS button baord followed quickly by the encoders and remaining LED's. I used ultra bright LED's and set them out so I could find my way around by colour code when using it in a dark room like a nightclub :} Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dcer10 Posted October 23, 2006 Author Report Share Posted October 23, 2006 Another tip with the front panel is that if you order one and the text is hard to read because it is too dark, which is a problem I had as I left some of the text black like in TK's then you can fill the engraving with liquid paper and when it dries buff it off by hand with a dry clean cloth, it comes up perfect. I have cleaned the surface by spraying mr sheen onto a cloth and buffing the surface of the panel, which makes it look great and also doesnt seem to smear or remove the liquid paper. The best thing about using the liquid paper is that there is no chance of staining the anodised metal in the way paint normally does if you paint outside the letters a little bit.Time to put the lid on and start testing... Unfortunantly this is where I am still at, theres several small problems as listed in this thread:http://www.midibox.org/forum/index.php?topic=7758.0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dcer10 Posted October 23, 2006 Author Report Share Posted October 23, 2006 It goes into the studio for some real world tests... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dcer10 Posted October 23, 2006 Author Report Share Posted October 23, 2006 Some more shots of it in my studio. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dcer10 Posted October 23, 2006 Author Report Share Posted October 23, 2006 Here are some links to YouTube showing it in the flesh :} http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_M4sqamEqIhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoR0g6ERny0They were taken with my still camera in video mode so the quality isnt the best but it gives an idea.I hope that some of these pictures will shed some light on the box construction side of things. If I can be any help to anyone on this topic let me know. Bear in mind im no electronics expert!All the best,John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stryd_one Posted October 24, 2006 Report Share Posted October 24, 2006 Im new to electronics so Im NOT claiming anything here is a good way to do it, just how I have done itLooks pretty good from here! Why didn't you get SIL connectors instead of soldering to the SIL pins? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dcer10 Posted October 24, 2006 Author Report Share Posted October 24, 2006 Hiya stryd_one, in hindsight I would have done that, but I could not source the connectors in Adelaide easily to begin with. I now have a source for them for the future. Maybe I should have waited. The upside is that they wont fall off :} Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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