need advice on controller project

[matrigs]

so - at the beginning i wanted to make a very simpel controller looking like a simple audio mixer - 8 faders and above every fader a column of 7 pots which control sends, eq, gains etc.

but before i consider making this rather simple box (one core, 2 ain, 1 din for buttons and 1 dout) i thought about "pimping" it a bit up and that's where i need help.

you can see what i'm talking about on the attached picture

so, the addition would be those two 2x40 lcd's with encoders beneath and to the right of them.

they would be useful to control the two effects that i have stuffed to send channel 1 and 2 - the upper would control the effect on send channel 1 (probably reverb), the lower one controls the effect on send channel two (probably filter delay).

so - what i want to achievie is following: the encoder to the right of every screen scrolls through "pages" of  predefined control names - very similar to the midibox tc with the only addition that insterad of a few buttons, i have a encoder to control every function.

the screen doesn't have to show me the actual value of the control, nor that it has been changed (i guess this will be a few days of programing less...)

i want to use predefined names because i mostly use a very standardized setup for playing and all those automap/logic control features creep the hell out of me when i have to, let's say scroll through 128 parameter names in absynth 3 to find the desiered one :|

i already made a very simple box with 9 faders, an a lcd, 24 pots and a few buttons - so i guess the "hardware part" wont be that difficult for me - already got a company which will make the frontplate out of milky-plexi-glas - looks very awesome.

now to my questions:

1. - is this setup possible to make on only one core? i mean it should be - as i don't exceed the input/output count but i mean performance related - is that a good idea to stuff that many to just one core? maybe i should divide the analog and digital part between two cores?

2. - how much time do you think it would take for me as a complete program noob never touching c to make those lcd's work like i want?

3. - should i use the midibox tc code and extend it or start a program from scratch?

4. - if i would want to use led-rings around those encoders - how much work is there with them? is this about copy&paste the example code into the c file or is there more magic behind it?

5. what do you think about the idea actually - do you think it's worth spending the money for the lcd's and the encoders and the time for this project - or should i, with mi minimal programming knowledge better stick to a simple interfeace?

thanks you VERY much for your help in advance,

matrigs

[matrigs]

actually a 6th question came to my mind:

6. what is more efficient (time and money wise) - making led rings or letting the value's of the encoders be shown on the lcd?

[matrigs]

some simple hint would be very nice - maybe i should start from midibox lc?

[DavidBanner]

some simple hint would be very nice - maybe i should start from midibox lc?

yes, start with the LC - all of the question you have asked can be answered yourself by some reading and experimentation.

[MRE]

1. - is this setup possible to make on only one core? i mean it should be - as i don't exceed the input/output count but i mean performance related - is that a good idea to stuff that many to just one core? maybe

they would be useful to control the two effects that i have stuffed to send channel 1 and 2 - the upper would control the effect on send channel 1 (probably reverb), the lower one controls the effect on send channel two (probably filter delay).

so - what i want to achievie is following: the encoder to the right of every screen scrolls through "pages" of  predefined control names - very similar to the midibox tc with the only addition that insterad of a few buttons, i have a encoder to control every function.

the screen doesn't have to show me the actual value of the control, nor that it has been changed (i guess this will be a few days of programing less...)

i want to use predefined names because i mostly use a very standardized setup for playing and all those automap/logic control features creep the hell out of me when i have to, let's say scroll through 128  i should divide the analog and digital part between two cores?

2. - how much time do you think it would take for me as a complete program noob never touching c to make those lcd's work like i want?

3. - should i use the midibox tc code and extend it or start a program from scratch?

4. - if i would want to use led-rings around those encoders - how much work is there with them? is this about copy&paste the example code into the c file or is there more magic behind it?

5. what do you think about the idea actually - do you think it's worth spending the money for the lcd's and the encoders and the time for this project - or should i, with mi minimal programming knowledge better stick to a simple interfeace?

thanks you VERY much for your help in advance,

matrigs

To be honest, I breezed through everything t'll the question list..

2 - is impossible to answer. You tell me. Get a stop watch and get coding. ;)

3 - ALWAYS ALWAYS start with a known good configuration and modify.

4 - LED rings are well documented in the main site, wiki, or by searching of the forum. When you have a built system, and a SPECIFIC code question.. someone here will have a SPECIFIC answer for you.

5 - Its YOUR midibox. Make it what you will. However, it is always wise to start small. Midibox is very scaleable and reconfigureable. So, build a core, a few ins and outs, and play around. When you feel its time to go the next step, just re-load new code. Start with a knob, a button, and an LED and know you can configure them anyway you want them. Then keep adding up.

[matrigs]

i rather wanted just something like a "kickstart" and someone to tell me where i should begin so i don't loose a few months coding before i get to the conclusion that i created a monster patch and have to delete it and start from scratch. but i guess that's the thing with diy. i mean you guys already have knowledge - i really want to work efficiently and the only thing i need is a small push.

i will start from zero - with the skeleton.

first i think that it would be absolutely annoying to delete all those unnecesarry functions from an application like m64e or m64 because there are just too much useless ones for me

second i wold rather want to stick to c and as the complete apps are all in assembler i don't want to mix it.

i think that launching all analog and digital inputs as well as showing the labels that i want on the screen seems to be rather simple as there are ready made examples in c for it.

the part that will make my nights sleepless is the part with switching the encoder cc's.

i will try to document every step and progress so i can make a decent tutorial afterwards.

cheers.

[MRE]

the config paging I really dont know much about. You might have to "hard code" your patch names and settings.

Im guessing once you have a working system, and are looking at code... you will have a few ideas, at which point tossing them out here will get a helpful answer.