a floorboard for my amp.Help would be appreciated!

[Maurizio]

Hi all,

this is my first post here, so please accept my apologies in advance if my questions sound stupid.

I have designed a switching system for a guitar amp based on a PIC18F, which I coded using C. This system takes care of all the switching in the amp and it's also enabled to receive midi program change. The switching in the amp is done with 7 buttons in the front panel of the amp or with program 1 to 7 with the midi floorboard. The remaining midi programs can be used to store patches in the PIC18F (for example: channel 1 with reverb and volume boost) that can be recalled easily with the floorboard, so that I can recall frequently used combinations without having to tap-dance on the floorboard. This is already fully implemented (on a breadboard so far) and coded and it works nicely with a commercial midi floorboard. It also works nicely on a simulation I am running in proteus, using the floorboard I found here: http://www.ucapps.de/floorboard.html.

This is where I need some advice. Rather than using a commercial floorboard I would like to use this one and customize it. In particular I would like this floorboard to have 7 LEDs that mimic what's going on on the front panel of amp. So, if anything changes in the amp settings, my PIC18F will send a byte to the floorboard's PIC, and the LEDs will switch on and off accordingly. Simple I suppose :P but the problem is that I don't know any assembly. I had a look at the floorboard's code and I wouldn't know where to start from, as it does not make much sense to me. Could you give me a pointer in the right direction?

Any help would be very much appreciated.

Thanks

;D Mauri

[lylehaze]

OK, I'll try.

First, WELCOME! I hope you have fun here.

What I'll suggest is just one way to go, there are many people here, and some will want to do this differently.

The floorboard code is written for an older PIC 16 that we don't use much anymore. Most new projects are written for one of the 18F chips that we have available. So, if you want to use that older code, you'll have to learn a bit of ASM to make the changes.

If you get a new MIDIBox core, it'll come with MIOS already installed, and you'll be ready to play. Since you speak C already, I think you'll find it easier to just start from scratch. To get some idea what I'm talking about, start with

http://www.midibox.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=application_development

and have a good read. If it looks interesting, try:

http://www.ucapps.de/mios_c.html

especially the table at the end. Finally, once you want to see more of the insides of MIOS, look this over:

http://www.ucapps.de/cmios_fun.html

You can see now that It's not hard to connect inputs (like floorboard switches) with outputs (like sending program changes and lighting LEDs). You can really just describe what you want in C, compile it, and download it to the floorboard without even unplugging it. The bootloader makes everything very convenient.

Start with the reading I showed you. If you think it looks like fun, download the source to some other projects that are written in C, and have a look around. I think you'll find it's not too difficult at all.

Most important, HAVE FUN!

LyleHaze