DIY automation Ider

[Skylar]

Any suggestions on Brains for automation?
We discussed Tascam FW-1884's with FE-8's, BCF's, etc,

But what else is out there? Is there something from MIDIBOX or whatever that is fairly easily buildable?
I'd almost rather do it with something that is not pre-made... name brand....

If it's not pre-made, that means you'll have to write the software...or someone will have to at least.
This is most easily accomplished with embedded programming of a micro-controller.
The firmware would have to:
-control the fader motors
-handle sending & receiving of data (probably Mackie HUI emulation for broad compatibility)
-USB protocol implementation (if you decide to use USB)
-other features (like user-customization of MIDI messages, etc.)

Read about the MF module at MIDIBOX; controlling the motors is perhaps not as simple as it seems.
(Maybe that's just me, though!)
But to a person who knows motor control (robot hobbyist for example), it would be no big deal.

We should find someone who knows robots to help with the motor controlling side of the firmware.
You would probably want to write the firmware such that operation could be calibrated to various motors (and thus various types/brands of faders).

USB-MIDI devices are not too terribly difficult.
I have written USB-MIDI firmware for the Microchip PIC18F series.
For a new project, though, I would want to use an Atmel µC.
This whole thing could be arduino-ized.



You could also look into the CMLabs MotorMix stuff if you want to go pre-made.

 

[ddt]

Midibox:
Yes, there is a readily documented application available, emulating HUI, scalable hardware, motorfader board, leds, etc...BUT expect some time to get into it. (i.e. wiring of the modules. highly modular concept overall, used hardware can be adjusted in the pic's application headers relatively comfortable).
Complex? a bit, but very good documentation of all details.
http://www.ucapps.de/
Please read the introduction of the MIOS operating system concept and the introduction of the MB hardwre platform first to see what it's all about.
The application you can dive in afterwards is called MidiboxLC (logiccontrol...). Their forum is full of information as well, ppl are as helpful and polite as here...

I've been working on a PCB that will bring together a lot of the functionality of the Midibox modules, but will be on a single board, which will save a lot of head scratching - a lab member also mentioned that there are several mistakes on the existing pcbs, plus having to run extra wires on the boards isn't too elegant..

The module will control 8 faders with touch sensors, have inputs for 4 switches per channel and outputs for 4 LEDs per channel - the switches could be used for solo, mute, channel select, record enable or other functions in the DAW.

It should be possible to daisy chain the modules, but each module can function on its own, as it has its own PSU, and can be set up as a master or a slave module.


The next big issue will be remapping the inputs in the software, as what I'm doing is different to how the current system is set up.

Also the board needs to be tested with a suitable fader, any bugs fixed, etc.. so even though the PCB's almost done I would say the project's only about half way towards a functional system.


Regarding the faders, it would be really interesting to get a sample of the Song-Huei fader. I got a quote from TKD for dual lin/log faders with a touch sensor and it was about half that of P&G, but another lab member got a very interesting quote from Alps for a similarly configured fader, which could make the project very worthwhile.


Cheers,

Dan

 

[SIXTYNINER]

EXTREMELY

 

[nrgrecording]

Hey Dan... nice pcb! What about the idea of adding a trigger circuit to the pcb? So that you press a momentary switch and the circuit shorts an output 3 times or so? (maybe adjustable by jumpers.. 1,2,3,4,5,6 trigger pulses?

With this it would be able to switch between channel 1-24 to 25-48. So you could either control the console faders or the faders of the daw?
With the ucapps bank switch you can only switch 8 channels... just like 1-8 to 9-16... with the triggerswitch you could switch between 24 channels with one button... something like a SSL duality mode.

Dunno if this makes sense. But the conections between MF module, core and Ain modules drived me crazy before putting the boards together... would look like an extreme diy.  ;D

Frank.

 

[Shorty]

Well I'm just on the blackberry right now so I'll have to read up on the Midibox stuff later, but I did look quick yesterday and it shows promise. I saw the MF board, and the LC, and the one on ucapps tha Axel built which seemed a decent emulation of my Control 24.

Dan was it? I'd be very interested in your board. More than happy to beta for you. I'm no expert with this stuff but I've fixed a ton of gear, building a pair of Mnats 1176's, and I've got a supertech buddy that knows everything I don't and he's always a phone call, or 15 minute drive away....

Couple questions about the midibox stuff before I head over there to research their stuff for a week.....

One is sorta answered, but, Dan, will yours be able to bank out together? This is really a must for me... Relayed interupt of some sort? Much of my work rolls to the second or third bank of the Control 24 at mixdown.

Am I able to FLIP? I saw this on Axels but not sure how it functions... Different boards do it different. I want to be able to flip pan or sends to my faders. The FW-1884 does this, and the Control 24 does with aux and wierd with pan.

It seems as though most anything else can be implemented for further button specific commands such as zoom, automation modes, transport, edit functions, etc...?

And am I correct that I read that each individual module requires its own midi port? I've got plenty of midi i/o, but it seems cumbersome to use that much.

And finally... The mf/fm board states limitations indicated mainly by its inability to adequately drive a coreless motor due to power consumption. Couldn't this be resoved by simply altering the power supply? And possibly going further and making the output to the motor adjustable/selectable to provide for further compatibility in faders? I see it's not so big a deal with standard motorized-only faders, but on a lin/log motorized fader it really narrows things down, and it seems to me they didn't even have that in mind in developement (not raggin em, just pointing it out)

I'm glad I looked at their stuff yesterday, gave me some better ideas, but also shows some limitations.

I can get a neve frame here locally pretty cheap. All pcbs, a few modules. Mayve I should grab it...

 

[juniorhifikit]

FWIW, HUI protocol is 4 banks of 8 faders - max.  You may also want to consider including the other protocols, like Mackie MCU or even backwards engineering Digidesign's newer proprietary protocol.  Shouldn't be too tough if you can sniff the midi data stream.

I spoke with CM Labs yesterday - Carl has a 24 fader product coming out soon...

 

[smallbutfine]

Dan, that looks very promising indeed. I always was turned off from bigger midibox projects due to the mentioned issues (mostly complex wiring and therefor lots fo possible faults, existing bugs etc---). Great work, is it 3-layer?

Frank,
the multiple trigger function is something I never thought about.
I always thought 8 channel switch is a design issue of Mackie protocol and never thought there could be a workaround, but your idea is excellent, yet simple! Triggering several times automatically to switch to a complete new mode is a *nice* idea.
tascam mentioned the us-2400 is not capable of that due to mackie protocol limitation, but well, sometimes you cannot see the forest for the trees...

juniorhifikit,
is Mackie MCU not basically the same protocol as HUI? Hm, I never tried to address more than 4x mackie port in sonar (1x us-2400~Mackie with 2 extenders + 1x bcf2000 as extender unit), maybe I should just try adding a bcf? I may borrow one from a friend around my place...
In my opinion, Mackie is the most-used protocol for daw control and therefore might be most desireable to keep. It is compatible with most software if not all meanwhile. Plus, re-engineering other protocols might not be as trivial as it seems. Implementation of mackie in ardour, for example, was made by sniffing out the midi and re-engineering, I remember. Took quite some time.....

Biggest issue I see so far is to get a midibox working with a good quality motorfader, I saw Thorsten Klose commented on the high-end P&G and alps types about an incompatibility due to 'coreless motor' control issue, that could not be handled by midibox platform anyhow.
I guess all of the very good feel faders are working after this principle - PLEASE proof me wrong, it would be great if there are exceptions!
At least he explained the issues (power consumption of the motors too high for TC4427 - this might be not so problematic to resolve by the people around here I guess....., second issue: motor speed gets too high, so sampling frequency is not high enough to get the positions - i guess this would be a showstopper by any means, again PLEASE proof me wrong).

Anyone with robotics experience on the board who could clear things up a bit technically?
This thread  might re-gain much more interest now....I guess everyone with an unautomated analog console thought about such a solution sometimes...

Kind regards,
Martin

 

[lolo-m]

Dan,
I'm too in if you need a beta tester !!!
This is what I simply need... and I'm sure we're numerous...

 

[ddt]

Hi Frank.. thanks!

Trigger circuit.... do you have a schematic of something that would do the job like you suggest, with variable trigger pulses? I could try to fit it in... somewhere.  I think I understand the concept of what you want it to do, however I'm not sure how it's implemented in the software.. (we'd also lose one one switch as a result, but some people probably won't mind).


Shorty... You only need one MIDI in and one MIDI out port for the whole system, the modules can be linked like this: http://www.ucapps.de/midibox_link.html

I love the Flip feature on the Control 24, but again my knowledge of the software side of things isn't all that great, so I don't know if the software can support it. All this particular module does is provide the impulses for the software to work with - you could certainly configure the digital inputs to perform various transport and zooming functions, but I'm planning to use something like this instead:
http://www.xkeys.com/custom/xkmatrix.php

That way one can program the transport functions as keyboard shortcuts and is able to use the digital inputs on the fader board for the channel functions.


Martin... It's a double sided board. I should have probably gone for 3 layer, it would have made things simpler.

There's a separate PSU for the 5V rail and for the 8 faders, both use a standard 317 regulator with a trimmer for adjusting the voltage. I was thinking of adding voltage followers after the TC4427s which could perhaps help but decided to build it as it is first. Not sure how to overcome the sampling problem though.


Regarding beta testers... I'd probably need someone who can take care of the software side of things, remap the input assignments in the MM app, etc. That's something I haven't started on yet, this would help to move the project forward.

Cheers,

Dan

 

[helterbelter]

this is very interesting......

 

[Shorty]

Yeah I spent some time readin over on midibox an ucapps

Looks like axel and doc nailed it.

Maybe I didn't undestand properly but u should read the thread on docs cause he said he linked banking so multiple sets of 8 bank together?

Also I see a flip button on axels but no detailed info of its function.

As far as losing buttons... Its all modular and daisy chainable right? So u could just bury more boards and feed wires wherever needed.

Looks like doc expanded to 40 channels so this shows promise. I have a line on 2 different boards... A harisson s-10b and a neve vr60 so I'll be getting one or the other, both are in states of being torn apart and in dissrepair so they are cheap and perfect donors for this.

Keep me up to date on your boards.

I'm going to start with the tascam to get my mistakes worked out on a cheap project first.

But it looks like midibox is the ticket for the brains of this operation....

Now to read more and buy up their components....

 

[ddt]

Hi Shorty, do you have a link to the thread in question?

Modular / daisy chainable... well, the board is a sort of an 8-pack: it's got faders for eight channels, plus four switch inputs and four LEDs per channel - in terms of this it's pretty much a closed package, as there are only four DIN chips on the board.

The board's designed to sit under every 8 faders in a desk, providing there's vertical clearance, but there's nothing to stop you from having another board without the faders somewhere else in the desk and configuring the software to have it do what you want - this is the part where it gets a bit complicated though I think.

So, as it is, if you assign one button for bank switching you'll end up with 7 channels with 4 switch inputs and 1 channel with 3 switch inputs... which may not matter to you at all.

Dan

 

[Shorty]

Here's Axel's
http://www.midibox.org/forum/index.php?topic=2516.0

Here's Doc's
http://www.midibox.org/forum/index.php?topic=2699.0

Here's the linking of multiple cores:
www.ucapps.de/midibox_link.html

I've got way more reading to do.

Axel and Doc's LC's are perfect. Bury that in a analog board with Log/Servo/Touch - Motorized faders, and bang......

The stuff is cheap too.

 

[Shorty]

I'm going to try to spend enough time to hammer out what I need for 16 channels,
transport, select, mute, record, flip?, and rotary per channel...

Maybe I can order tomorrow and start building a MIDIbox brain.....

I've got 16 spare ALPS faders from the Control 24, brand new, just sitting, and all 24 in my Control 24 are also new.

Might as well try this MIDIbox thing out and see how it flies with ProTools... Got half my parts already... heh heh.... not really

 

[Shorty]

Here's Axel's
http://www.midibox.org/forum/index.php?topic=2516.0

Here's Doc's
http://www.midibox.org/forum/index.php?topic=2699.0

Here's the linking of multiple cores:
www.ucapps.de/midibox_link.html

I've got way more reading to do.

Axel and Doc's LC's are perfect. Bury that in a analog board with Log/Servo/Touch - Motorized faders, and bang......

The stuff is cheap too.

Yeah, yeah... ok I think I see what you meant, and how I wasn't clear.

Looks like you can daisy as many Cores as you want, and keep adding MF boards for faders?

How many MF's per core? 1?

The components are all fairly cheap it seems, so even having to buy 1 core per MF would not be bad.......

 

[[silent:arts]]

hey guys, just had a very quick overview of this thread.

just wanted to mention:
keep an eye on the motor faders / brand / control / whatever ...

I'm not an expert with this, but an expert in exchanging faders due to manufacture / software / whatever faults

Digidesign D-Commands: had to exchange all ALPS Faders to others (same ALPS, but other date code ...)

Mandozzi:
we have working ALPS units, but the newer mixers have to be exchanged to PG Faders. well, only 200 faders ...
we have working PG units, next software update the faders have to be exchanged to ALPS faders ...
and they have a nice fader calibration tool which should allow different brands.

the list could go on, but would get boring.

just wanted to mention: it is not an easy task.

 

[Shorty]

I have a bunch of ALPS sitting around and apear to be those used in the LC's by Axel and maybe Doc.

Alps
http://www.alps.com/products/WebObjects/catalog.woa/E/HTML/Potentiometer/SlideMixers/RSN1M/RSA0N11M9A06.html

Compatible P&G would be
http://www.pennyandgiles.com/docGallery/79.PDF

For a Log/Linear/Touch/Motorized P&G which should function with the MF
http://www.pennyandgiles.com/docGallery/82.PDF
so long as you get it with the iron core motor?????? 7.4v verses the 10v max rating on alps....

What does the MF deliver? I know V is not the only factor here, but one of the biggest in relation to fader compatability issues as described on Ucapps by their own guys in regards to compatible faders tested with the MF.......

The Coreless motor voltages are higher. By about 5 volts... rating wise......

The other thing to keep in mind is that the motor stands alone. Motors can be swapped.

Also, Dale Manquen informed me I can get pretty much any spec motor I need on a P&G, not just limited to those on the datasheets

 

[[silent:arts]]

now, I have loads of faders around, since they never want them back even in warranty time 

I don't want to be a game breaker, just wanted to let you know:
major manufactures have problems with this.
keep this in mind.

I'm sure Mandozzi wouldn't exchange 16K EUR faders under warranty if it could be easily done in the software.
and for sure Digidesign won't.

 

[Shorty]

Well, if nothin else I can use the ALPS ones and build something close to a Control 24.... then I'll have a crapload of consoles sitting around...



Can't hurt to try..... I'll just get a bunch of individual faders till I find a winner and run with those.

Limited selection of log/linear-servo/touch/motorized tho.

Wanna send me a few for demo's??

please!?  :-*

 

[ddt]

Hi Volker, thanks for the heads up!

Yes, it looks like choosing the right fader won't be easy.. or at least cheap!


Shorty - there's one Core PIC plus one "MF board" on the PCB, driving the 8 faders. You can't really use the core to control more than 8 due to the necessity of rapid sampling of them all.

The PSU for the faders is a 317 which can put out about 1.5A, the maximum voltage will depend on what transformer you use.

I'm pretty sure P&G will do custom faders, however, the quote I got per fader at a quantity of a 1000 pieces was very high.