About MidiMon

[pay_c]

Hi there folks!!

Some questions about the MidiMon: I built it now and got (some) problems:

- The Midiclock Range of my Midimon just goes up to 0:99:..:..

Im sending the Midiclock with Cubase. Its just counting up very fine and then sotps at 99 for values over 100. The beats although are still count up normally.

Is that normal??

With the SMPTE its working fine.

-If Im switching to the mode, where all the controls are written out (e.g. "cutoff" instead of " Ctrl. 48") it seems to me, like there is one letter to much, and the end of the bargraph comes in again on the first letter of the next line.

- I do think this is normal, but just to go sure: When Im scrolling up to older values (with those up/down triggers), I can just go up to "-C". Is that allright, not more?  And also the value (e.g. "-A") is shown right in the upper right corner overwriting the text there. Also normal?

If you say, all´s working fine, I gonna put it in its housing right away.

Regards pay.c

[TK.]

Hi Pay.c

I will check this.

Best Regards, Thorsten.

[pay_c]

Thnx TK. btw: How were the holidays?  ;D

Welcome back home!

[TK.]

> How were the holidays?

too short like every time. But my next holidays are in June ;-)

Best Regards, Thorsten.

[pay_c]

Dont wanna be curious, but is there something new, TK?

[TK.]

Hi pay,

unfortunately only bad news yet:

- The Midiclock Range of my Midimon just goes up to 0:99:..:..  

Im sending the Midiclock with Cubase. Its just counting up very fine and then sotps at 99 for values over 100. The beats although are still count up normally.

Is that normal??

thats an imperfection of the firmware, it stores the MIDI clock and SMPTE data into the same registers, the values are coded in BCD format, therefore numbers greater than 99 cannot be stored. For SMPTE this is ok, as the numbers will be received in BCD anyhow, but the MIDIclock handler normaly would require a totally different handling. In fact I would have to write a new routine especially for MIDIclock --- I will do this for the PIC18F port of the MIDImon (because with MIOS the programming makes really fun), once the routine is up and running, I will maybe integrate the new implementation also into the PIC16F firmware. Release date: unknown

-If Im switching to the mode, where all the controls are written out (e.g. "cutoff" instead of " Ctrl. 48") it seems to me, like there is one letter to much, and the end of the bargraph comes in again on the first letter of the next line.  

I cannot reproduce this problem. Yes, the end of the bargraph is not visible on screen like in the "numbers mode", but the routine which prints out the bar takes care for this and suppresses the last character. I'm not sure, maybe your display behaves different from mine, it's really hard to search for chars which are printed out but not visible on screen. However, I could send you the source code if you would like to help me ;-)

- I do think this is normal, but just to go sure: When Im scrolling up to older values (with those up/down triggers), I can just go up to "-C". Is that allright, not more?

yep (unfortunately, but the PIC hasn't much more memory). The PIC18F implementation will be able to store more data.

And also the value (e.g. "-A") is shown right in the upper right corner overwriting the text there. Also normal?

yes, here I used a special shadow effect, the text and the -X value are alternated with a high frequency, so that you have the impression that the value overlays the text below

Best Regards, Thorsten.

[pay_c]

Okay, thnx a lot! Thats just all minor problems. I think I can live with them. ;D

Im already using it...

[pay_c]

Update: Just wanted to let you know in the meantime, TK:

The Midimon is kinda unstable. It starts to print very (VERY VERY) weird characters after a certain time. The whole LCD gets messed up.

Anyhow, the MTC Display is still working absolutely correctly.

Also: If I plug it out (since above this happens more often) and in again, the RAM of the PIC is stored very long without the power (about 5 seconds). So I think you can put the big capacity on the core module from 2200 uF down to 1000 uF without any problems.

Just wanted to let you know, nothing big, especially as the Midimon will be exported to MIOS in some time.

[TK.]

Hi Pay,

the capacitor specs are depending on so much parameters that it would be too difficult for a newbie to decide which values is the right one for his design. So I used the biggest value, which is good enough for a clean value when also a LCD with backlight and a lot of LEDs are powered from the same module.

Of course, if your PSU already contains a cap, you can left out the one of the core module. Or if you don't use the analog inputs and therefore a clean voltage is not important, you can also replace it by 100 uF or 470 uF...

Regarding the crash issue: I'm totally unsure how to reproduce this, my monitor runs fine but maybe your application sends any event (maybe an invalid event??) for which the firmware has not been prepared?

Best Regards, Thorsten.

[pay_c]

Hmmm, could be... It´s in a row with a Virus B. The Out of Cubase goes into the Mon and then (thru port) into the virus. I´m sending MTC with Cubase.

Perhaps I´m sending some weird stuff... really dont know. I´ll try to plug it somewhere else.

But anyhow, thats not so important, I just wanted to have an MTC Display, and I got it.  ;D ;)