2 hours ago, TK. said:
My first KiCAD project - I don’t miss xcircuit and Eagle & I’m happy that other people can now edit the files with state-of-the-art open source SW as well
KiCAD is great ! Glad you switch
Best
Zam
While waiting for the PCB I worked on the “Apple MIDI” protocol which allows to transfer MIDI messages over WIFI (and Ethernet - known from this project:
http://discourse.midibox.org/t/topic/18081
As a second project I consider to create a universal “MIDI bridge” device for MIDIbox projects which supports UART, Bluetooth, WIFI and SPI, maybe also CAN.
So, it can be connected via SPI port J28 to a MBHP_CORE_STM32/F4/LPC17 instead of the MBHP_ETH module, or alternatively via UART (e.g. also to PIC based projects) giving us wireless connections 
The latency is not so nice - expect ca. 5 mS + some jitter - it won’t be really suitable for sending MIDI Notes, but it will be very nice for MIDI controllers.
Another topic which needs to be explored: if the antenna is strong enough to send/receive in a metal case, like MIDIphy MBSEQ V4+
Best Regards, Thorsten.
Great work! The universal solution will be much appreciated as we have spare UARTs on the upcoming BLM
I think that a ESP32 could handle the BLM16x16+X code internally, no need for a second core
Best Regards, Thorsten.
Short update: the ESP32 based MBHP_MF_NG can now communicate with BLEMIDI over Bluetooth, Apple MIDI over WIFI, and traditional MIDI via UART
-> https://github.com/midibox/esp32-idf-mfdrv
Still some work to do, but I think that this is a pretty good basis for other MIDIbox projects - special focus was on reliable SysEx transfers and routing between different MIDI interfaces.
This major challenge is solved!
Best Regards, Thorsten.
Great work Thorsten !!
Side question, is it possible to hook ESP32 and STM32F4 cores with direct midi/UART connection (high speed without opto like I do between 3 STM core here)
And use it as a RTPM wifi bridge ?
Best
Zam
29 minutes ago, Zam said:
Side question, is it possible to hook ESP32 and STM32F4 cores with direct midi/UART connection (high speed without opto like I do between 3 STM core here)
And use it as a RTPM wifi bridge ?
Or prepare the ESP32 as a SPI-MIDI slave like a kissbox?
Actually I wanted to provide SPI slave (see some postings above), so that the module can be connected to J28 instead of ENC28J60
But a UART connection is available as well - and the baudrate is configurable by default.
As long as you only need a point-to-point connection, UART is a good choice. But for accessing multiple ports (e.g. BLE and Apple MIDI) SPI would be better, because it considers multiple “cables”.
Best Regards, Thorsten.
P.S.: in context of MBHP_MF_NG: only UART option will work, because SPI is already used for other purposes.
So meanwhile: is it worth replacing the PIC with the ESP?
I’m designing a PCB for MF NG by myself. So if the PIC is outdated I’d upgrade to an ESP up front.
Yeah, I know, I’m like six years late to the conversation, but…
I was looking into the ESP32 myself recently, but for an entirely different purpose. From what I understand, there are two hardware UARTs on the ESP32 that can be accessed on the dev kit v1 board. I have further come to understand that the device can be configured as an i2c slave with a configurable address using the Arduino IDE and the wire library.
My thought is this: configure the ESP32 as an i2c slave to provide 2 DIN MIDI outs (plus perhaps Bluetooth MIDI) to my stm32 based MIDIBox sequencer build, in opposition to the PIC-based i2c MIDI solution, as it is getting harder and harder to program PICs in the modern age.
Does this sound like it could be a feasible solution, TK?