the becoming of a midibox Future.

[Wisefire]

guess i'm starting another project..

this time the midibox future.. its gonna be done in conjunction with the update on the C64 controller. as they work with the same system.

its basically going to be a monome clone, with a few twists.

a picture of the box

its an old cable modem.

its gonna have a button grid (with full deghosting(in other words a tishload of diodes)) and a led grid(havent seen a C example yet.. cuz i havent been searching probably..)

i was wondering a couple of things though..

first of all

these tactswitches, are they compatible with a 2.54 raster.. my german isnt that great, and it seems to me that they arent.. which i find very odd. cuz i havent been able to find tactswitches that are..

secondly.. is it possible that my led grid has 2 leds for each led position, basically i want to have the same grid on the other side of the box(without the switches) for people to look at while i'm performing with it.

i guess thats all for now..

[Wilba]

i was wondering a couple of things though..

first of all

these tactswitches, are they compatible with a 2.54 raster.. my german isnt that great, and it seems to me that they arent.. which i find very odd. cuz i havent been able to find tactswitches that are..

Your German is great, it's your English that isn't  ;D

These are the switches TK used on his MB-SID so they should work fine... I've used these before... well, I've used identical looking ones from ALPS... the SKHH series. You can make them fit in 100mil spaced holes... i.e. corners of 0.200 inch square, centred on a hole. I straighten the bend in the pin. If you're making this fit an exact panel hole, then perhaps solder them after you assemble panel to circuit board, so you can correct bad alignment.

secondly.. is it possible that my led grid has 2 leds for each led position, basically i want to have the same grid on the other side of the box(without the switches) for people to look at while i'm performing with it.

Cool idea! You can drive more than one LED, you can do it with two LEDs in series (DOUT->resistor->LED->LED->ground/DOUT)... but perhaps not that good for your situation as the second LED is on a different panel... perhaps have them in parallel:

DOUT->+->resistor->LED->+->ground/DOUT
      |                 ^
      |                 |
      +->resistor->LED->+
[/code]
i.e. attach resistors to the common anode "rows" for each LED matrix, then just connect each LED matrix to the same DOUT pins (without resistors, direct to shift register pinouts). If you use bright LEDs, you won't have a problem with too much current draw, but if you want you can add some BC547  transistors on the current sinking DOUT... or even add a second 74HC595 connected in parallel!  ;D

[Wisefire]

Your German is great, it's your English that isn't  ;D

wtf, i pride myself in the fact that my english is pretty good. :'(

These are the switches TK used on his MB-SID so they should work fine... I've used these before... well, I've used identical looking ones from ALPS... the SKHH series. You can make them fit in 100mil spaced holes... i.e. corners of 0.200 inch square, centred on a hole. I straighten the bend in the pin. If you're making this fit an exact panel hole, then perhaps solder them after you assemble panel to circuit board, so you can correct bad alignment.

so the pins are 2.54 mm compatible.. in that case i dont understand why the data sheet tells me the pins are 4.5 and 6.5 mm apart..

Cool idea! You can drive more than one LED, you can do it with two LEDs in series (DOUT->resistor->LED->LED->ground/DOUT)... but perhaps not that good for your situation as the second LED is on a different panel... perhaps have them in parallel:

DOUT->resistor+>LED->+->ground/DOUT
   |                 ^
   |                 |
   +->resistor->LED->+

i.e. attach resistors to the common anode "rows" for each LED matrix, then just connect each LED matrix to the same DOUT pins (without resistors, direct to shift register pinouts). If you use bright LEDs, you won't have a problem with too much current draw, but if you want you can add some BC547  transistors on the current sinking DOUT... or even add a second 74HC595 connected in parallel!  ;D

the box is pretty small, its gonna be a bitch to get it all fitted. so a second 75HC595 is gonna be out of the question. as for linking it up parallel, that was what i was thinking aswell. only i thought that this might work.

DOUT->+->resistor->LED->+->ground/DOUT
                 |      ^
                 |      |
                 +>LED->+

[Wilba]

wtf, i pride myself in the fact that my english is pretty good. :'(

;D It is, I was just joking...

so the pins are 2.54 mm compatible.. in that case i dont understand why the data sheet tells me the pins are 4.5 and 6.5 mm apart..

I didn't say they were 2.54mm compatible... only that you can make them fit into the holes of the standard prototyping board (not the stripboard kind which has really small holes).

the box is pretty small, its gonna be a bitch to get it all fitted. so a second 75HC595 is gonna be out of the question. as for linking it up parallel, that was what i was thinking aswell. only i thought that this might work.

DOUT->+->resistor->LED->+->ground/DOUT
                 |      ^
                 |      |
                 +>LED->+
[/code]
That's generally not a good idea, it won't work for LEDs with different voltage drops (i.e. red and green) and might not work for LEDs of the same colour... if they have slightly different voltage drops then one of them won't light. Well, that's the theory, it might still work.
I forgot to mention, if you do LEDs in series, it's less current but may require higher voltage, so probably not possible with 5v.