Motormix emulation

MIDIbox HUIs
1

OK its been a few years since I’ve played midibox…

I pulled out my Midibox LC this morning, (PIC18F452 based) and was wondering the basic steps to turn it into a CM motormix emulation?

Do I need to find the old version of the motormix application? Or will the new version work with my hardware?

Do I need to compile it? (I never used MIOS studio, I always used to use the Microchip IDE, then convert with perl and then upload with midi OX!)

Do I need to configure it? (I used the default pinouts, shift register locations etc in my Midibox LC build)

What’s the best way to get the app into my Midibox LC?!

Cheers and hi to all,

Steve C.

P.S. I know logic with LC rocks but I need to practice using Protools to keep my PT skills up!

2

OK I had a look at MIOS Studio, I have a bit of background work to do before I can try this. (mainly checking I have my LC configs backed up somewhere before I overwrite the current application on the PIC)

3

OK my re-found midibox obsession has had me up till 3am in the morning… just like my good old mb days! (when I was a student, studying sound, obsessed with pots, buttons and motorfaders!)

So I was on the wrong track… (got caught up thinking in terms of the old compiling/converting/uploading methods) I thought it was too good to be true to be able to just upload a project.hex file to a running core using the Mios Studio app!!! But it is true!

Read here: http://www.ucapps.de/mios_studio.html

To re-iterate:

To upload one of the completed MIOS applications, you construct a core, power it up, connect your midi cables to your computer, load your project.hex file into Mios studio, and click start to send the app to the core module!

So I have tried the Motormix emulation… and it works! I have been able to control Protools (M-powered demo v7.4) faders with the Motormix application.

So far, I have been able to control banks of 8 faders, pan encoders, mutes, solo, select track, bank select and some other functions (that are also available as hot-keys anyway)

A few issues…

Random motorfaders dropping to -infinity (just an inconvenience really, as the default setting is for fader data to only be sent if the touch sensor is activated)

No feedback on LCD screen, just the Motormix emulation ready screen.

Motorfader driver does not work as great as my MBLC… (faders buzz a bit) but may be tweakable

Stay tuned…

Gettin ready for re-entry to the mothership!

4

To upload one of the completed MIOS applications, you construct a core, power it up, connect your midi cables to your computer, load your project.hex file into Mios studio, and click start to send the app to the core module!

YUP! This is of course subject to the PIC Chip, having already had the bootloader programmed into it, (which if you buy one of the core kits from Smash it will have) and also having MIOS already transfered over via MIDI. But other than that, yes, it’s now that easy to do! no more messing about with the code! just send the Application over to the PIC with Mios Studio and most of the time you can even configure it from Mios Studio as well. Makes it real easy to re-write bits of the apps just to try them out.

I’m custom writing a shed-load of stuff at the moment, partly for my current replica Prophet 5 project… but I’m also playing with custom apps for the next one, a 24-8-2 Mixer project… It’s all very cool.

I love reading times when somebody else is having this much fun with it all.. it inspires me to carry on with my own projects.

Best Regards,

Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

5

I too recently blew the dust of midibox controller I was building 3 years ago. And had the same results in Protools LE. Buttons all worked but the display was blank in Protools. I did however get the display working in Logic. It would be great to get a working display in Protools.

6

OK, yesterday I started thinking about this again… thinking about building a couple of simplified MBLC/motormix box… kmifflin, have you (or anyone else) managed to get the ledrings working with Protools?

Cheers.