First MidiBox, need some thoughts

[Durisian]

Hi, I'm new here, although I've been lurking for many many months.

I just can't stop thinking about all the wacky controllers I could build!!

Here's my first one, which a I need few pointers on.....

In my project studio i work mostly alone. Control keyboard on desk. Guitar with V-Amp in one rear corner, Triton LE88 in the other. And also a Vocal postion in front of the keyboard.

I have FCB100 Midi pedal board. Which when I'm tracking guitar, I can use to control cubase.

I want to put basic transport control at each of the other 'stations' as well.

I'm thinking core with 2x DINX4 and DOUTX4 on the desk which will feature extended transport control + 4x full parametric eq control on encoders. Possibly a fader. MB64e

And then extending a box to each station with a DIN and DOUT only. So running J8 and J9 down a single cat5 cable (SC, RC, SI, SO, Vd and Vs = 6 wires, leaving 2 spare).

I think I read somewhere that someone did this over 45 feet with a dout module???

Each extension box will have the same functions. To save on DIN/DOUTs Can more than one DIN/DOUT share the same shift register? by taking SI/SO at the input stage, and passing it directly to the output.

Now that got me thinking some more (yep, that's bad) Would it be possible to emulate the shift registers id with hardware.

Perhaps using dip switches to set it's place in the chain.

Let's say I wanted to connect an extension to the extension boxes, that had controls specific to that area.

That would leave 2 control sets that are different, sharing the same shift register id.

SR1 - 8 Master  > SR9 Transport extension box > SR10 Triton specific controller 

                              > SR9 Transport extension box > SR10 V-amp specific controller

Any thoughts on how to emulate SR position in the chain?

This could lead to creating 4 maybe 5 different control sets that can be placed many times, in many locations.

Although there is a lot more room in my project to build more DIN's and DOUTs and user separate SR's

I'm trying save them for future upgrade of the master controller. Without having to build multiple cores.

All thoughts/ideas are appreciated