Hello, Looking for Advice With Custom Trigger

[cheekyrooster]

Hey there :)

Im a full newbie, looking for some advice with a custom controller. Im going to have a crack at building it, cos no-one makes what i want (quite a regular thing here I suspect!)

What I would like to build into my current rig is:

a small custom 4 pad drum trigger (maybe using the pads/FSR's from a dead Akai MPC2000Xl I have here), and a midi clock unit with play and stop buttons to start and stop the sequencer in my AKAI S5000 sampler. The sampler has a midifile player, and responds to start/stop midi clock messages. I want to do it all remotely.

In the band I'm in I play bass and trigger the sampler live with a keyboard on stage. But what I really want to do is attach the trigger pads to the bass in a small box( If possible I may even build them IN to a bass at a later stage)  and also have a play and stop button there as well, so I can control the setup remotely...the wires would maybe run to the midibox setup, which is then midi'ied up to the sampler.

At the moment for the live show I hit the play button on the sampler to trigger the sequencer. But in tests I used the transport buttons on my CME keyboard in the studio to make it start and stop, and it worked. The CME keyboard generates MIDI clock. It also worked with an MPC1000 sampler. In other tests (an old roland MS1 sampler) without MIDI clock the samplers sequencer wont run.

The pads would be a simple midi note on/off setup. and set to say Note C1/D1/E1/F1. Velocity would be cool, but if its a hassle I can do without it.

So! After a bit of reading and studying I'm thinking that I would do this by:

buying a midibox kit from Mikes (http://www.mikes-elektronikseite.de) and anything else needed

connecting the pads (or if thats too hard something simple like buttons) to the unit for the sampler triggering

Connecting  play and stop buttons to the unit for the sequencer controls

Selecting the correct setup in MIOS, and away you go! (I hope)

Does that sound correct?

My questions are:

Do you think I should use the guidelines of the Midibox64, and then attach a  clock box module (http://www.midibox.org/forum/index.php?topic=5691.0), or for this rig maybe a Midibox seq V3, seeing it has clock features? Or is that a bad unit for the Note/sample triggering?

Do you think the setup is feasable?

Thanks for reading this guys. I'm really intersted in building some stuff, and if soldering gets bad have a mate to help me with that too. I saw some of the other projects here and its amazing what crew build..I'd like to get into this stuff! Thanks. Any help and advice is very much appreciated! Cheers!

Half hour later update:: Aha! Sorry, I think I understand how to do this..is this correct?

1.Build a core module

2.Build a DIN Module, and connect to the Din module the 4 pads (or just buttons if the pads dont work) and the play and stop buttons.

3.Connect the DIN module to the core

4.Next I need to sort the clock. Do I need another DIN module, or can I use the one the pads is connected to?

The clockbox guide says:

Required hardware:

  o one MBHP_CORE module ***COOL

  o one DINX1 module (or just a 74HC595 shift register + pull-up resistors) ***IS THIS IMPORTANT?..IS A 74HC595 shift register A GOOD IDEA..and what is it? HAHA

  o one rotary encoder ***NOT NEEDED, AS MIDI FILE SETS THE TEMPO

  o 5 buttons ***JUST NEED TWO

  o 2x16 LCD ***AN LCD COULD BE COOL!..DONT I JUST HOOK ONE UP TO J15 JUMPER ON THE CORE?

5. Connect the Midi In and Out Ports

6. Put it in a box

7. Play with MIOS to set it all up

8. Have a beer!

Thankyou for reading this...Im sorry of some of these questions are a bit lame!

[stryd_one]

If you use a DINx4 module (four of the shift registers that give you 8 digital ins each) you can add extra buttons (your MPC pads) to the default clockbox app. I think this would be your easiest way. You'll definitely have to be able to write code in C to do this, but it should be easy. Good luck, and don't forget to use the search!