MIDIbox of the Week (2xMIDIbox LC made by eufex)

[eufex]

I've finally got round to taking pics of my 2 'finished' projects. 2xLC box is now 99.5% complete apart from a little bit of coding to change display information. Live controller is 95% complete - just midibox link and configuration to complete:

Original construction and build pics in this thread

http://www.midibox.org/forum/index.php?topic=4909.0

Cheers and a HUGE thumbs up to everyone

Edited March 23, 2010 by eufex

[stryd_one]

Wow huh!

I think this might be well suited to the MIDIBox of the Week thread ;)

[henrygr]

Midi box of the month even. They are excellent. Well done.

[Screaming_Rabbit]

... very nice work eufex... congrats!

Greets, Roger

[DrBunsen]

I can just imagine visitors to the studio.

"Nice desk, what is it?"

"Oh, I built that"

"..."

[eufex]

I can just imagine visitors to the studio.

"Nice desk, what is it?"

"Oh, I built that"

"..."

lol  ;)

[TK.]

see above - fantastic work! :)

[pay_c]

:-* :-* :-*

Lovely machine indeed! Some competition to Axel´s LC´s (at last! ;) )! Congrats to that beautiful monster!

[eufex]

Yes, the LC box is very much based on Axel's - huge  props to him for a brilliant original design. There are (minor) changes to the design for Cubase and button layout/layering and things are a bit different internally with the mounting etc but it's virtually a cross between Axel's 2xLC and 3xLC design.

[eufex]

Here are a few more build pics of the live box...it's a bit of a rat's nest in there  ;D

The live box contains an MAudio Firewire Audiophile for firewire/midi/audio which runs from a 12v supply, as does the goose-neck lamp. Fortunately both work fine from an unregulated supply (MAudio regulation is on the board) so I simply tapped my power supply after rectification and before regulation for 5v.

The 2xLC box contains the board from a Midisport 2x2 for USB MIDI and a dual regulated power supply of my own design (very large toroidal transformer used). Also in the box the design was changed with regards to the LED rings for the encoders being mounted on vero strips - mounting the encoder and button proved to be problematic with the button not being 'solid' enough so circuit boards were built for this section. The meters however are still mounted on strips.

Edited March 23, 2010 by eufex

[MTE]

:o    :o    S o    m a n y    c a b l e s    :o    :o

very great work !!!

Regards

MTE

[eufex]

LOL. Yes - it took a whole reel of 16way ribbon cable (30m!) + some more and then extra wiring for +5v and grounds. It's a fully stacked 3 core box, no spare capacity 1x MB64, 2xMB64E so I think that's 3 cores, 2Ain, 10Din, 10Dout.

[Sasha]

Hey eufex, nice job! I like idea of using sliders for send. Short sliders are much faster to operate than rotaryes.

One thing is strange to me on your Live controller. I see you are using 2 buttons and LEDs for selecting the A/B, but that function in Live is mapable only to one multipress button. Press once>B, press twice>A, press trice>none. Is that planing error. I made that kind f error on my NI Traktor controller. I made two buttons for filter type selection, but Traktor supports only one. Please explain.

What kind of touchpad you used for your boxes? I like it.

[eufex]

Yes I prefer sliders for that too - also I find it better for moving more than 2 at the same time with any accuracy.

You are quite right about the A/B mapping in Ableton - only 1 controller is used. It wasn't a planning error however as I wanted the option of two buttons which can be acheived with some coding or max jiggery pokery. Of course it also gives me the option of just using 1 button and then having 1 spare for something else - one idea has been to use it to switch between the send sliders and a second 'virtual' bank of sliders, although then the inital point of getting as much on the front panel as possible to keep everything completely visual and transparent would be lost.

The touchpads are very reasonably priced ones from Voti. I found that to get them to mount flat with enough firmness to be able to press the buttons  you need to make a metal bracket which sits underneath them - I just used some sheet steel with 2 mounting holes drilled and then used some very large washers on the screws to hold it all together firmly.

[Sasha]

Thanks for the answer Eufex. That touchpad are pretty cheap. How is its quality/precision?

[mikeb]

Woah. Could all that wiring be dangerous? Cause heat issues? Reminds me of the electrical mess in the movie A Christmas Story. :)

[eufex]

Yes the touchpad works perfectly OK. The only thing that doesn't seem to work is 'tap' mode like most modern touchpads do where you can hold the cursor in one position and quickly tap on the pad in another position to make the cursor 'zip'.

In answer to the next question....no there are no heat issues, we're hardly talking 90kW VSDs here and it's all perfecetly safe. I could have spent an age making the wiring really neat but there isn't too much of an advantage in doing so - it was a mammoth task as it was getting the two boxes finished in parallel in 14 months and I'd rather get the project on to the next stage which is preparing all of the music for playing live and practicing rather than being anal about the neatness of the wiring ;)

[eufex]

Pics will be back up shortly - I'm just in the process of moving my web hosting

[TK.]

Two of the pictures can also be found on the midibox.org server:

http://www.midibox.org/midibox_gallery/eufex3.jpg

http://www.midibox.org/midibox_gallery/eufex4.jpg

Best Regards, Thorsten.

[eufex]

:)

Cheers

I will get the build pictures back up as soon as I can - I'm having problems with the transfer of my domain to a new registrar at the moment - they accidentally cancelled the process on the first attempt.

[haris]

Yes, the LC box is very much based on Axel's - huge  props to him for a brilliant original design. There are (minor) changes to the design for Cubase and button layout/layering and things are a bit different internally with the mounting etc but it's virtually a cross between Axel's 2xLC and 3xLC design.

Hey

great box you've got there!

I am planning to do a similar controller. Any chance of those build photos for 64E?

And I've tried emailing you but your email is not working also.

[eufex]

Hi

Sorry I've not been around for a while. Is it the 2xLC box you're interested in or the 3xCore 64E and 64 box? Hopefully my domain is sorted again and I'll be able to put the pics up if I can find the backup DVD. If not then I'll put them on rapidshare or something for you to download.

I've not used the domain email for a very long time - I got fed up with spam and idiots I was getting 400+ emails a day and it became to difficult to filter out the genuine ones. People in the music industry know how to get hold of me so it hasn't posed too much of a problem in that respect...

Incidentally, if anyone is interested I have a spare front panel for the 3x box - maybe this should go in the other forum but I thought I'd mention it here.

[eufex]

Just popped back in - changing some LC code and found all these photos on the same DVD:

Photobucket

[nILS]

All the pics in all of your threads are dead. Would you mind attaching them to the posts?

<broken-record>offsite doco bad</broken-record>

[eufex]

All the pics are on the photobucket link. no idea how I'd attach them to old posts. I don't have my old login details anyway and can't do a password request as I no longer have the same email.