MIDIbox of the Week (MIDIbox Seq v4 by gjvti)

MIDIbox of the Week
1

Hello,

To mark/celebrate my 1/2 year engagement with midibox I decided to publish some photos to illustrate my approach of sequencer building for those who may be interested.

I started on January 16 ordering main board and some other parts from avishowtech (SmashTV). Unfortunately I haven’t had time to play this thing intensively since I’m still stuck on its mobile rack type integration in my setup. So for now only pictures and some details - I hope to add video later when I’ll have time do it properly as intended.

Some more pictures available at forum gallery (sorry, I don’t know quite well how to manage it)

and also at flickr.com

Some kind of parts list and costs of my midibox seq project - see below:

Table doesn’t include ~50+ EUR for wrongly purchased parts. This is my first DYI project

and in my real life I’m quite far from electronics. Of course, normaly sequencer can be built

at least twice cheaper - for example you can pick cheaper LCD from ebay, replace Omron

buttons with standard ones + leds, replace silk printed aluminium panel with laser engraved plastic,

replace deltron midi connectors with standard ones, etc… this will give you significant savings.

What I learned form this project - SMD are realy cool. Love to solder SMD resistors

and capacitors.

Best regards

gj

PS

Many thanks to Thorsten and also Wilba for an

idea of unified din/dout pcb. I’m looking

forward to build new blm matrix later this/next

year, but at the moment I don’t quite understand

yet how it is connected. Thanks everyone for

your support!

2

so cool …congratulations !

3

I moved this to MBOTW, hope you dont mind :wink:

Beautiful box, congratulations! :frantics:

4

What a god damn Beauty that thing is. Beautiful work, great colors, great PCB, great case. Brilliant SEQ!

5

Beautiful work there, congratulations!

And if this is really your “first DIY project”, you scored big time!

Looking forward to some video with all that lights blinking :ahappy:

(not to myself: get own MBSeqV4 casing done and be quicker with a new video demo)

6

It is a beautiful MidiBoxSequencer :drool:

7

nice work gjvti!

8

Thanks for your positive responses!

I got some questions from forum members about switches/buttons and other stuff, so there is some additional info.

I used standard tact switches for function buttons some accompanied with leds (btw utility button is together with jog dial encoder) and illuminated Omron B3W-9000-RG2N for 16 GP, pattern and layer select buttons. Standard switches have decorative transparent plastic caps adapters, which are handmade from KömaTex (?) - very easy to cut foam plastic. Omron switches also got KömaTex adapters, but they had to be cut precisely so I ordered them at local plastics workshop. Initially I planned to stick decorative blue caps directly, but those Omron buttons suffer from insufficient illumination at bright light so I decided to remove their original milky white caps for better illumination. Transparent button caps are CNC milled/cut from PMMA FROST plastic. White is not glued together so far, since I do not expect open the box frequently and also I’m bit worried about how they match to holes of aluminium panel + tolerance of holes was to mall. So far I’m satisfied with the action of those Omron buttons - they are much softer than standard tact switches, but react well.

http://discourse.midibox.org/t/topic/14256

My DIN/DOUT pcb is single sided own design and have some flaws since I designed it taking a risk and having no any real part and without knowing exact dimensions so later I had to cut extra holes for spacers and LCD pin headers and do some rewire. Etching (ground, vdd and signal line busses for registers) was made at local seal/stamp shop where they make all kinds of signs and print works. Holes were drilled at home - that took 3 evenings. LED and button wires and also signal wires (chains) for registers are soldered with different colour wires overly. It was really hard to get coloured thin wires (white were easy with soviet MGTF(?) non-melting). Finally I got required thin wires ripping some old vga type cables. All soldering work for SmashTV kits and my PCB was around 4-5 full working days (~40h)

I decided to make my own single sided PCB because I missed Wilba pcb bulk order and had no clue where I can order such double sided pcb locally.

Panel is silk printed aluminium with specially glued aluminium L profiles at the bottom side to eliminate screws at panel front side. Silk print was done at the same seal/stamp shop where etching. Yep, that is expensive if only a single piece is ordered. If I had to build another one, I think I would opt for mill cut instead of laser cut since laser cut surfaces are rough and this doesn’t go well with moving plastic parts (button caps) and also milling would allow photo-colour technique which is bit cheaper than silk print. After laser cutting I had to do some filing of rough surfaces manually - a pain in the a…

So I hope I have answered all the questions, which arose so far :slight_smile:

If some more questions - let me know.

PS yes, this is my first electronics DIY project. At late teens (20+ years ago), I built RC car at soviet army sports club :slight_smile: but that involved only mechanics - electronic parts were borrowed from club (I do not remember the make).

9

Beautiful.

must… resist… meme… fail.

IN SOVIET RUSSIA, MIDIBOX MAKES YOU!

10

Beautique!

IN SOVIET RUSSIA, MIDIBOX MAKES YOU!

hehehe.

11

A quite beautiful sequencer, and I really like the panel design, very modern and clean. In the analogue synth world I have a pet hate of all those modulars that just have to look like a 1970’s Moog, (or a 1970’s Hi Fi system).

Your design looks like a piece of up market test equipment, and I can tell from the layout that you put some serious thought into the way it would work for you.

Great work.

12

Congratulations, your MBSeq looks really impressive!

I´ve got a question regarding your modding of the button caps… how did you do it? (Just saw the gallery pic, nice work)

Thanks!

Peter

13

Really nice one … indeed