Baffled by overly zealous DIY ??

Miscellaneous
1

I just learned of the MidiBox community… I feel blessed that this circle of creative people exists… and that I seem welcome to join in sharing all this creativity… Then I am feeling a bit baffled… Recognizing that big picture potential of this creativity… I suggested to a friend who just sold me some serial Hi side driver boards…that he might want to take interest in helping to bridge the Ardiano and MidiBox communitys…

This friend like many struggles to run his small business…and I gather would welcome the opportunity to empower many additional people to start working with MidiBox technology…

I personally have picked up a soldering Iron many times in my life and have put plenty of things together my self.. I am also a systems designer who knows that when one wants to build bigger systems level innovations that it is often important to mange the cumulative complexity of what one tries to put together and that for these reasons it is often important to obtain some of ones components already assembled to some level…

Otherwise translated… As a systems level engineer I can bring a lot to this party…Then most of this in reality, these day,s is software related…I certainly recognize the contributions of others in this MidiBox community to the software that ultimately make the MidiBox controller a real success..

While I would hit the road running helping bring the latest version of the MidiBox core logic up, instead of being able to acquire an already up and running board… some in this community seem to be suggesting that the price of admission to this community is that I prove that I know how to solder…Now I am not asking that these same people prove that they can work in the Time/Frequency domain Dual space in there sleep… so why the over zealous nature on the DIY thing…your community would likley grow faster and much healthier if others let people do they they felt they could do that would most contribute to the MidiBox community… Otherwise translated…

Maybe your community might want to reassess as to if some level of pre-assembled and tested core logic board might be made available for those just diving in the latest MidiBox implementation…

I hope these thoughts help to bring some level of reflection regarding the friendliness quotient presented by the MidiBox community..

all the best

-Peter

2

Peter,

Unfortunately you’re not the first person to come here and announce that they want to do something of a commercial nature. Regardless of your intentions in doing this, you have set off on the wrong foot in a sense. In case you didn’t know, there is already a community sanctioned shop for midibox boards and kits here: http://midibox-shop.com/

Take it slow, build a few midiboxes, offer your assistance where you see fit, and you’ll find that this is actually a very friendly and helpful community.

Hope this helps :slight_smile:

3

Dear

findbuddha -

I guess I’m a bit saddened that my efforts to be constructive in a economically more viable fashion are some how taken somehow as “you have set off on the wrong foot in a sense”… I certainly am capable of picking up a soldering iron. Then I’m not sure at this point if the MidiBox community has any real sense of what it takes to be __WELCOMING__ enough to grow past a potentially cliquey mind set… Do you actually want someone who can work in the Time/Frequency dual space (in his sleep)…to wounder why your community can’t see the value in letting some vendor populate MidiBox core logic boards under a proper license (I’m not asking for it to be me)… This is not rocket science, but basic economics 101…even in an open design environment… So if newbies who have real and possibly valid opinions are not welcome here (as I am beginning to sense) Just let me know and I’ll kindly go away…

Sorry that for some, using a soldering iron is some how more redeeming than having solid background in advanced servo control system design.

All the best

-Peter

4

Noone’s asking you to go away, and neither has anyone suggested that your ideas are invalid. People have in the past signed up on the forum, demanded to be able sell TK and other’s work, then become indignant when told they may not. You may guess that it’s not the best way to introduce yourself around here.

Please, if you are interested in contributing your knowledge, stick around. Buy a Core32 kit, or even get a populated LPCXpresso board here: http://www.embeddeda…lpc1769_xpr.php For someone of your skillset this shouldn’t be a barrier to entry - if you genuinely want to participate here.

Things move slowly around here sometimes. :thumbsup:

5

im sorry but all im getting here is " i want to buy a pre assembled and pre tested core 32 kit because im too lazy to build it myself". Also the main crux of this site is to help people to learn about the midibox and also basic to advanced electronics and coding the software. The admins and the members go out of thier way to help people here, with references to the many threads that contain information on the related subject in question (as per find buddahs link in the above posts). There is also a live chat section where you can on most days talk to either Nils or Wilba also SmashTV along with other members about any relevent topic or just a chat in general.

For years the members of this site have helped new members with as much info as they can, however, and I cannot make this even more clear, the main thing this community brings to you is the initiative to D.I.Y. Taking the time to learn the modules, to build them yourself and having the pride at the end when you fire it up and get some use out of it. This is what the forum trys to give you in return for purchasing one of its many kits.

Midibox is not about making it economically or commercially viable, it is an introduction into the midibox software and hardware for those who want to learn to build,modify and use the projects listed here, for free i may also add.

The only thing you have to do is put some effort into building the kits yourself, something you seem either unwilling or unable to do.

Thats my two cents, now im going back to my current build project

have a nice day.

6

@ssp: what are you building atm?

7

This is not rocket science, but basic economics 101

It’s neither about understanding the economic potential of MIDIbox, nor about the ability to use it. It’s a valid choice to keep it DIY.

8

i probably do not have the best market overview, but the midibox platform already seems to be very efficient in terms of getting hardware to work and provide desired functionality, without push from the commerce 101.

of course it all depends from skilled engineers who are able to “do things half asleep”.

so if you’re able to develop, commercially produce and make a living of highly interesting products that’s great! for example i am not that skilled, unfortunately.

and if you like the community that much you could even design them compatible to midibox and declare them open source for diy.

may seem as a smartass comment, but that’s just your request from the exact opposite point of view.

9

Peter, the community and what MIDIbox is doing right now is absolutely great as it is, really no need for change :-).

Best regards,

Peter

10

I think that MIDIbox is very friendly community.

I never build synths and other midi stuff before, but this community show me how.

You newer can buy a pleasure like when you build your own mashine, and with MIDIBOX

community and with help of all members you can!!!

regards

IGI

11

This community is all about the DIY spirit and freedom from commercial background.

The thing is, it’s not that most people around here would totally dislike commercial activity -

the requirement is, that this activity benefits the community and not just makes money from other people’s work.

The two sanctioned places to sell midibox hardware are run exactly to provide that.

People sticking around long enough have seen people trying to do somethin commercial, or doing unsanctioned knock-offs,

come and go, and I can’t remember one of them leaving a good impression. This is why people coming in talking about

commercial ideas in their first posts are usually not well received…

It’s not about “buy a premade board” - it about “build your box”.

If you can design your own boards, make them and run them all the way through, do so - for yourself,

or even people in the community that may use them (ultra’s ultracore is a prominent example of that).

Just note that in order to sell these designs, if they incorporate anything of the midibox platform,

like in implementation of board schematics, or software delivered with it, it needs sacntioning by the copyright

owner (which would be TK). Anything done for the community and openly done in the community, like making

a batch of boards and sharing the cost with other people, is usually fine.

The premade boards are for the people that don’t want to make their own ones, or can’t.

They’re not a requirement per se.

Regarding commercial or semi-commercial activity in the community, there are good examples around of things

that are possible and can work out. Anything offered that doesn’t touch other peoples copyright material

is your own decision to do, e.g. if you come up with a new module for a new application, that’s your design

and your copyright, and you are free to do with that how you like.

However, people in this community like stuff free as in freedom, and some as in beer.

This means that anything that’s closed up will unlikely be very successful.

12

<hostile mode> I senz a glitch in the matrix…<___base_url___>/index.php?/topic/5789-intent-to-sell-midiboxes&do=embed :whistle: </hostile mode>

On a serious note. The midibox community isn’t about commercial success. It’s about the opportunity for people to make what they can think of.

It’s not up to me to make a big statement about commercial use. Thorsten is the first that can make a statement about that. But besides that there are a lot of people that put a lot of hours into this community and the projects around it. I personally wouldn’t appreciate it if i had a contribution which would then be turned into a commercial product.

So i also think you are getting off on the wrong foot. First you should get to know the community. Make yourself added value. Then maybe, just maybe you can pop the question.

13

Welcoming - absolutely.

Commercially interesting - absolutely.

Interested in going commercial - absolutely not.

Here, have a flower instead. :flowers: Oh, and if you have a problem with one of your midiboxes, feel free to show up here for totally non-commercial and free advice.

14

Since you joined the forum you have proposed to make midibox more like arduino which is inferior in many ways. You also complain that there is no pre-assembled arduino style dev board to purchase, you also ask for information on programming for MIOS32 then when the creator of the project takes time to personally link to some of that information, you reply with the links he “should have” given you and complain that the documentation or the site structure is not logical enough for a newbie, when clearly you were able to find it on your own, and you keep jumping back and forth between “I’m such an awesome programmer, I just know I can make apps for MIOS in my sleep” to “It needs to be more newbie friendly” to “I could totally revolutionize the whole platform and the website if only someone would build me a core32” to “I’ve got a really original idea, let me sell the hard work of this community” to “Gee, you guys are overly zealous and you’re not a very welcoming community”

Come on guy, you have all these ideas which you think are huge, which basically consist of taking the arduino business model and applying it to midibox, and you claim to write awesome apps in your sleep, and you want to use that talent for midibox apps, and you’ve got plenty of energy to write lengthy posts about your ideas but you can’t be bothered to do what’s currently necessary to acquire the hardware that these ideas would hypothetically run on…

Just keep an eye on the fleamarket, ocassionaly someone will sell an assembled core32 because they have given up or need cash, or whatever, there was a guy just last week offering to sell an assembled and tested core32, sorry, you’ve just missed it.

I’ll make you a sweet deal. I can’t be bothered to hack the ableton live API and I’d like a midibox app that can control every parameter and receive every imaginable type of feedback from ableton, so you go ahead and develop that app for me and I’ll build me and you a core32 and everybody wins! I can assemble a core kit in my sleep between wet dreams, oh BTW, “you’re doing it wrong”

PM me if you wanna trade efforts, that’s how we do it around here.

15

Dear

Sid ( monster? )

Now let me see… should I reply to your conjectured ranting or go back to getting GDBserver running on the MidiBox over Ethernet?.. The only reason I’m not soldering my own CORE_LPC17 Module right now is that I’m waiting for them to become available…to little “clueless” newbies like me… As for your lovely suggestion of a deal…

I was planing on assembling a second midiBox Core_LPC17 while I was at it…and send it back to Thorsten as a justure of good will to the Midi box community so that someone like who might need it to hit the ground running in doing what there best at (writing software) will feel properly appreciated for what they bring ( I will let Thorsten decide who that should be )…

So I will make you a deal… I’ll help YOU write a better Abelton Live driver… If you will agree to stop flaming at me and go back to doing something more constructive…

There is a very real reason I have written what I have,… If one reads the midiBox form… I’m not the first to receive notes like the one you just finished sending me…and in all candidness…by doing so, your not doing the image of the midiBox community any favors…

Now you say ““I can’t be bothered to hack the Ableton live API””…and I write back I’m to busy hacking the Abelton API to want to be bothered into replying to rants like yours…so Grow up and learn to Hack the Abelton API…so I can end up helping you to get the job done…sorry that the best you can manage to to is pick up a soldering iron…

all the best wishes towards your further empowerment.

-Peter Lindener

16

ok, thanks for your last post, it finally identified you as forum troll, which i suspected all the way from the beginning.

*ignore mode on*

17

oh dear… dont let the door hit you on the way out…

18

As in real life communities, people in the MIDIbox community will have different opinions and different levels of zeal (you know who you are, guys!)

Every so often, the “non-commercial”-ness of MIDIbox and what it actually means gets discussed (bitched about?) here or on other forums. Labels like “elitist” get used. People complain about a right to sell whatever they make. Even relative newbies to MIDIbox get all preachy and express righteous indignation about the mere suggestion of the MIDIbox user not being the one who soldered their MIDIbox. Oh the huge manatee! etc. etc. So take it all with a grain of salt, basically.

To address your specific question: while a pre-built Core might save the first time newbie a bit of hassle having a known-good board they can plug in and play with ASAP, if that newbie didn’t have the tools or skills to solder even a Core module, then what exactly would they do with the Core anyway? Surely they’d want to interface it with something and need to do some soldering eventually.

So it’s not a “price of admission” as you put it… just an assumption that the newbie would have to do some soldering to build their MIDIbox project. Can you give me a scenario where a newbie to MIDIbox would not need to do any soldering at all? i.e. they just plug in a Core and that’s it?

19

Dear

Wilba -

Thanks for providing an example of thoughtful, reflective dialog.

You ask for an example of where the Midi_Box core logic board might be useful in a software project all in its own… Lets say I’m interested in building a very advanced, DSP based synth module. I would like it to have Midi I/O…but the core logic is Open Sound Control based, and runs on a HalkBoard

see: http://www.hawkboard.org/

I’m not sure yet who I should thank…but someone with real vision has already pulled Open Sound Control over Ethernet’s UDP into the Midi box equation…

More and more innovation these days happens on the software side of this equation… all I’m doing is posing the question…if someone feels more at home just on the software side of things, and he is really good there, do we really want to send him away just because soldering is not his strong suit… While I’m not that guy…and am certainly willing to assemble a few extra boards for the greater good of the MidiBox community… why would we want to be less than inviting when good software oriented talent comes knocking on the door?

But there is still a deeper reason, people new to all this digital stuff are encouraged to continue when there there efforts end up working…I’m not saying that learning to solder is less than good…only that its a easier to get someone back on track with software…than to undo the mess of a poorly soldered board… In particular…without good electronic debugging skills… its easy enough for them to just get discouraged and end up giving up…now the likelihood of this kind of discouragement happening…is far less if they already have some part of there midiBox project up and running…ie. a known good CPU board…is a good start…

The above reflection would be only more so if we welcomed Ardiuno beginners into this community…On that count I offer this reflection as to exactly why on earth I would even make such a seemingly absurd suggestion to welcome those who are just learning what digital logic is all about:

Regarding Arduino…it is not like there is much there that maters other than the people who are just starting out. But out of those new people just learning will someday come the future growth of midiBox… so I would like to invite, send welcoming message…and build a bridge between communitys… Yes I know that the Arduino platform is nothing much but someday the people (children) who started there will be our future… That is all that is truly good about Arduino.

just my two cents… others please chime in!!

-Peter

As in real life communities, people in the MIDIbox community will have different opinions and different levels of zeal (you know who you are, guys!)

Every so often, the “non-commercial”-ness of MIDIbox and what it actually means gets discussed (bitched about?) here or on other forums. Labels like “elitist” get used. People complain about a right to sell whatever they make. Even relative newbies to MIDIbox get all preachy and express righteous indignation about the mere suggestion of the MIDIbox user not being the one who soldered their MIDIbox. Oh the huge manatee! etc. etc. So take it all with a grain of salt, basically.

To address your specific question: while a pre-built Core might save the first time newbie a bit of hassle having a known-good board they can plug in and play with ASAP, if that newbie didn’t have the tools or skills to solder even a Core module, then what exactly would they do with the Core anyway? Surely they’d want to interface it with something and need to do some soldering eventually.

So it’s not a “price of admission” as you put it… just an assumption that the newbie would have to do some soldering to build their MIDIbox project. Can you give me a scenario where a newbie to MIDIbox would not need to do any soldering at all? i.e. they just plug in a Core and that’s it?

20

I like the Cat the picture you posted… Yes they are kind of nice to have in the studio…

No need to worry about the door…unless someone is planing on throwing me through it… I’m quit able hold my own in more thoughtful, reflective discussion… I would presum likewise on your count..

all the best

-Peter

oh dear… dont let the door hit you on the way out…