Can I interchange the connections of the top and bottom (ground and input) connection of the motorfader so that the fader can be installed the “wrong” way (top is now at the bottom)?
(because I can get motorfader with the motor at the bottom - but there is not enough space to install them… with the motor at the top it wouldn’t be any problem)
Thanks,
Roelli.
Yes, it will work when you swap the two motor pins and the Ground/+5V terminal of the fader.
Take care: the metal case of the fader still has to be connected to ground, and not to +5V!
Best Regards, Thorsten.
Take care: the metal case of the fader still has to be connected to ground, and not to +5V!
Thanks, Chef! :flowers:
Metal case connected to ground? Well, I think I don’t understand why you’re giving a note on this. However, the case is connected to my signal ground with the two M3 screws. Probably the case ground lug of the fader also needs to be the reference ground for the touch sensor?
Honestly I think I will just buy three bcf2000 rather than doing a midibox because buying the motorfaders seperately is about the same price than buying the hole bcf2000. (haven’t asked albs/Balthasar Schmidt but they’re 22€@ebay)
Do you accidently know what the supply voltage at the linear track of the bcf2000 is? Because i would like to connect the bcf ground to the analog ground of my mixer and try to control the vca’s controlvoltage with this voltage. (vca fader in an old analog desk)
Background:
In the begginning i thought about making 3 midibox64E with MF module and ain module + 3 midibox cv with AoutNG… this can make a nice vca fader automation. A bunch of diy guys all over the world have old analog desks and are in need of controlling the analog part with a daw. Commercial stuff costs about 10.000€ and most of them are out of business. There is also some discussion at the prodigy audio diy forum about that - but nothing happens so far… prodigy - automation thread
Isn’t it possible to use an MF module with ain + the AoutNG? So that the data is always sent to the AoutNG? I could make a small 8xVCA circuit to control the audio volume. (I don’t know if this may be possible with the midibox link function?)
Thanks for your time.
(if you need a frontpanel, let me know - would make prototype panels for free to support the midibox projects if that helps… fpd files will work fine)
Roelli.
Metal case connected to ground? Well, I think I don’t understand why you’re giving a note on this.
Just to ensure that we have the same understanding 
However, the case is connected to my signal ground with the two M3 screws. Probably the case ground lug of the fader also needs to be the reference ground for the touch sensor?
Not for the touch sensor, but as a good shield against noise (which would result into jitter).
A perfect ground connection to the case is important, the connections via M3 screws are not sufficient.
Honestly I think I will just buy three bcf2000 rather than doing a midibox because buying the motorfaders seperately is about the same price than buying the hole bcf2000. (haven’t asked albs/Balthasar Schmidt but they’re 22€@ebay)
If you want to save money, it’s a good choice.
The motorfader project was created before BCF2000 came to the market, today I probably wouldn’t do the effort anymore.
Do you accidently know what the supply voltage at the linear track of the bcf2000 is? Because i would like to connect the bcf ground to the analog ground of my mixer and try to control the vca’s controlvoltage with this voltage. (vca fader in an old analog desk)
We opened a BCF2000 case long time ago in doc’s lab - the construction is impressively compact, faders and motors are directly soldered on a PCB. It was too hard (and dangerous) to find a way to control the faders directly with the core module.
We haven’t measured voltages, but it can be assumed that they are either 0-5V or 0-3.3V
Isn’t it possible to use an MF module with ain + the AoutNG?
Yes, thats possible softwarewise, but the idea to connect the VCA CV directly to the MF wiper wasn’t so bad, I think that this will already work, so that no AOUT module is required.
(if you need a frontpanel, let me know - would make prototype panels for free to support the midibox projects if that helps… fpd files will work fine)
I would need a frontpanel for my 16x16 BLM - I will write you a separate PM 
Best Regards, Thorsten.
Thanks for the info, Thorsten.
I’ll try the behringer. We’ll see if its a good idea to tie the analog (audio) and digital (controller) ground together. :unsure:
I still have two unused cores… thinking about buying some 2x8 lcds with backlight for showing the tracknames on the analog console.
I read that it would be possible to connect 8 seperate LCDs to the core? Can’t find 2x10 character lcds, but 1x8 or 2x8 is good enough.
Question:
From Cubase/Nuendo… the first 10 characters can be send to a midibox LC? So the last 2 characters are just missing? No problem.
The midibox can also run in Hui mode for using protools or other sequencers and show the tracknames?
Does it make sense to buy the 2x8 lcds? At the moment I don’t know what can be displayed on the second line :whistle:
KS0066 controller which is HD44780 compatible
Thanks,
Frank.
Hi.
MIOS only supports 2 character LCD modules although it would be possible to increase this is as long as you have enough spare i/o pins available on your PIC (and a knowledge of PIC assembly to modify the code :rolleyes:
If you want more than 2 LCD’s, the easiest method is to move to a serial driven graphical LCD, my personal favourites are the EA DOG series ( http://www.lcd-modul…oducts/dog.html ) These are fully supported by both MIOS8 and MIOS32 for up to 8 displays (I know I wrote the driver!)
Another option is the PCD8544 based displays (from mobile phones) these are small 84x48 GLCD’s and up to 8 are supported.
The reason that up to 8 displays can be supported on these GLCD’s is that they use serial rather than parallel data so the 8 data lines can be used as enable/select lines instead.
EDIT: If you go for the EA DOG displays, make sure you get the graphical not character ones as the MIOS driver only supports 2 of the character type (as it uses the parallel not serial interface)
Thanks
Phil
Whaoo.. yeah.. these FSTN neg. trasnmissive… whatever - white text on black background looks extremely sexy! :shifty:
But its too big. I wanted to put them into my analog channelstrips of the mixing desk. The channel width is 44mm. The DOGs are over 51mm.
I could also add them into the armrest or to the meterbridge but I definately need lcds with the same width like the channels.
The PCD8544 controlled lcds I’d found (nokia 3310 type) lcds are 45mm.
:console:
Frank.
Phil, what about the “EA DOGS 102-6” ? (with UC1610 controller) (supports industry standard 2-wire, 3-wire, 4-wire serial bus (I2c, S9, S8, S8uc) and 8-bit/4bit parallel bus (8080 or 6800)
Do these lcds work with the core and midiboxLC direclty? (I can’t code anything… last time i worked with assembler was 15 years ago - and I learned nothing) :shocked:
My link Datasheet LCD
My link Datasheet controller
The EA Dogs 102-6 would fit perfectly into my mixing desk…
Hi.
That display uses the UC1701 controller, I have never tried that one but it does look to be very similar to the EA DOGM128-6 the initialization looks slightly different but it should still work and if not would be VERY easy to fix!
Just for information, it is the EA DOGXL160-7 that uses the UC1610 and I have written a MIOS32 driver for this but due to the way it works (2 bits per pixel) it is a bit more complicated to write a MIOS8 driver and I am unlikely to try.
As far as Midibox LC is concerned, if you plan to use 8 displays then it will need some modification to work with all 8 displays but as LC is written in C it is much easier and it will mainly be correcting positions of things.
As the current driver assumes that the display is 128x64 then you can either modify the driver (pretty easy as you just change every occurrance of the number 128 to 102 in app_lcd.c or just make sure you don’t display anything between 103 and 128 (as they will not appear!)
The driver just appears to MIOS as a single LCD which (for 8 LCD’s) is 256x256 the layout should be fairly obvious if you look at
http://svnmios.midib…g%2Fapp_lcd.inc
If you do decide to go down this route I will happilly help you get it working. (it is always good to stay on the right side of somebody with CNC access )
Cheers
Phil
Ok… 4 month later… I still WANT to have 24 LCDs in my analog console. :rolleyes:
After 100s of emails and discussions in other forums the final idea is not to put an lcd in every channel… but just make a small bar with the leds which will rest on top of the console.
But… I can’t find a grafical LCD with 40mm width! :frantics: :frantics: :frantics:
If we could get it working this should be a nice project for others, too. Because they just need to change the distance between the lcds. It could be easy to make a behringer BCF2000 LCD overbridge.
I could buy a mackie control, which already has an LCD, but I can’t use the LCD because it does not have the right dimensions.
Phil, TK… does anyone know about an small lcd which should work? The EA Dog LCDs would be just perfect… but the 2x8 one is a character-type.
If you do decide to go down this route I will happilly help you get it working. (it is always good to stay on the right side of somebody with CNC access
What about making a driver for 8x character LCDs!? Maybe 2x8… first line shows the tracknames from the DAW… the other line can show the channel number (CH 1, CH 2, CH 3…)
My cnc machine is ready for your orders for the next years! :whistle: :flowers:
Thanks,
Frank.
What about making a driver for 8x character LCDs!? Maybe 2x8… first line shows the tracknames from the DAW… the other line can show the channel number (CH 1, CH 2, CH 3…)
The 2x8 CLCD from lcd-module.de ( http://www.lcd-module.de/eng/pdf/doma/dips082e.pdf ) is already supported as it is HD44780 compatible. Obviously though with the current driver you are limited to the number of these LCD’s you could use.
It would be possible to add more of these displays but I would imagine that the latency would become a problem with (say) 24 of them… You could do it by connecting the “E” input of each display to an output of a DOUTx4 module, the driver would be fairly easy to change…
The only really small GLCD’d that I have seen are “screenkeys” http://www.screenkeys.com/ they are 32x16 or 36x24 GLCD’s built into a switch cap. They use a SPI style serial data so it wouldn’t be too difficult to write a driver for them. I have not quite got round to buying any so I haven’t written it (yet!)
Cheers
Phil
but I would imagine that the latency would become a problem with (say) 24 of them…
I just need the LCDs to show the tracknames.. not for showing controller values.
I need some help:
As far as I know it will show 6 characters of the tracknames from the daw, right?
What will happen to the second line of the 2x8 LCD? Can I use the other 8 characters? I would like to show “CH 01, CH 02, CH 03…” at each LCD if this is possible.
Or is there no use for this? Then I would just try the 1x8 type.
The only really small GLCD’d that I have seen are “screenkeys” http://www.screenkeys.com/ they are 32x16 or 36x24 GLCD’s built into a switch cap. They use a SPI style serial data so it wouldn’t be too difficult to write a driver for them. I have not quite got round to buying any so I haven’t written it (yet!)
Yeah. I’d seen these buttons on several new live consoles at the musikmesse this year. Tje 24x36 is 31,48€/each. = 755,52€ for 24 channels… just affordable. But probably smaller and harder to read.
Are the EA DOG lcds only nice at a specific viewing angle? Because I have to put them in a console and then they’re not in front of me directly.
Profesional recording consoles are using VFD displays. Negative black/white LCDs would be extremely sexy, too. But the 2x8 EA’s seem to be the only ones which will fit.
Thats a picture from a professional recording desk:
The analogcircuit which controls the VCA with the fader voltage of the BCF2000 seems to work fine by the way:
Thanks,
Frank.
okay… do I have to wire each 8 LCDs in parallel then? (but not the Enable connection) ?
Something like this maybe:
okay… do I have to wire each 8 LCDs in parallel then? (but not the Enable connection) ?
Yes you can safely wire as many LCD’s together as you want (within reason I suppose…) The LCD will not respond until it’s particular Enable line goes low. The beauty of this is if you wanted to display the same thing on every display (for example to clear them all) you just set each displays enable line to low and the command works on all of them!
What will happen to the second line of the 2x8 LCD? Can I use the other 8 characters? I would like to show “CH 01, CH 02, CH 03…” at each LCD if this is possible.
To achieve more than 2 LCD’s the LCD driver would need some (small) modifications. The way that the DOG GLCD drivers work for example is that they are seen as a large matrix to MIOS:
* +--------------+ +--------------+
* | | | |
* | X = 0..127 | | X = 128..255 |
* | Y = 0.. 7 | | Y = 0.. 7 |
* | | | |
* +--------------+ +--------------+
*
* +--------------+ +--------------+
* | | | |
* | X = 0..127 | | X = 128..255 |
* | Y = 8.. 15 | | Y = 8.. 15 |
* | | | |
* +--------------+ +--------------+
*
* +--------------+ +--------------+
* | | | |
* | X = 0..127 | | X = 128..255 |
* | Y = 16.. 23 | | Y = 16.. 23 |
* | | | |
* +--------------+ +--------------+
*
* +--------------+ +--------------+
* | | | |
* | X = 0..127 | | X = 128..255 |
* | Y = 24.. 31 | | Y = 24.. 31 |
* | | | |
* +--------------+ +--------------+
You could do something similar for a large number of smaller CLCD’s.
With regard to the viewing angle of DOG displays, the CLCD ones are quite bright (although I have never used the 1x8 or 2x8 ones) there are various different types and backlights available although I usually buy the cheapest so i’m not sure which would be the brightest?
Cheers
Phil
Phil
Thanks Phil!
Okay. So this solutions is probably easy to do.
I talked to a friend in isreal and he used two HDSP2000 displays with his microcontroller. Its a 5x7 dotmarix serial input alphanumeric display. Probably something which does not fit to the driver and needs a totally new programming but the guys from israel said they would like to give howto’s.
For me… these displays are sexy as hell, small, for IC sockets, he got them from a surplus store, and I think they’re better if you want to read the characters from the side and not if you look 90° to the LCDs :blink:
