Novation ReMOTE Le 25

Miscellaneous
1

Ok, let me start this off by saying that I have been trying to figure this problem out off and on for quite some time now.  I didnt know exactly where to ask for help after Novation support had no answer so I am hoping you technically inclined folks can help me.  Here is a link to what I sent to Novation (ignore that it is on a Ubuntu forum, as that was just a random idea I had to try and get some help, my main OS is WinXP):

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=638211

I figured I would post it here in the off topic section as I dont want to clutter up all the excellent talk in the other sections, not to mention this really has nothing to do with midibox at all.  But as I read over here you folks seem extremely knowledgeable and one of the commonalities I see is that at one point in time at least the Cypress AN2131SC was used as a USB module.  Please keep in mind that I have no programming experience or anything of the sort, but if you give me specific instructions, I am on it.  Any help certainly appreciated.

Thanks,

D

2

I doubt anyone else will care to say this so directly, so I’ll save you some wondering: I think you’re screwed buddy :frowning:

You could maybe read the eeprom from another board and de-solder yours and burn it, or maybe do some reverse engineering to figure out novation’s bootloader (BTW, a row of black squares sounds familiar! hahah) or whatever, but to be honest, I think you’re gonna have to take it to get repaired. Or use it for spares and stuff it with a far more powerful and flexible midibox core :wink:

3

I find this a flaw of novation that you cannot acces the boot loader to retry the flashing.

In my opnion novation should fix this for you and you just pay shipping cost to compromise.

4

I find this a flaw of novation that you cannot acces the boot loader to retry the flashing.

In my opnion novation should fix this for you and you just pay shipping cost to compromise.

… same opinion from my side! Except they write somewhere that you do the update on your own risk and that the possibility exists, that something can go wrong which makes the unit unusable.

Greets, Roger

5

I can only agree: it seems that Novation forgot to implement a fallback mechanism which allows to re-program the firmware if the previous transfer has been aborted. The AN2131SC is probably only used as USB->MIDI bridge; the EEPROM stores the firmware for this micro. It won’t help to reprogram this EEPROM, in distance: it could make it worse. I guess that the firmware update targets the Winbond microcontroller, which contains an embedded flash memory, so that updates are not possible by replacing or reprogramming external components.

Best Regards, Thorsten.

6

Judging by the responses I am seeing here, it seems as if you all have heard of these Novation specific problems, eh?  When I had sent them an email via support, they really just had no answer and tried to refer me to their repair sidechain company of some sort, but when I sent them an email they just ignored it I guess, as I got no response back from them.  Sucks because it happened really fast and just like that it was inoperable, and I had no idea what hit me.  I mean I understand its just a cheap controller but I feel sucker punched because the thing is physically flawless just technically crippled.  Kinda wish I dropped it or something, at least that I could blame on clumsiness.  Wonder what usable parts I could take from this thing if it is just dead weight?  Should I break it down and show some pics or something?  The board itself is really small compared to the actual unit, and tons of what would appear to be surface mount soldering.  Anything worth hording?

Anyway, thanks for the responses fellas.

D

7

Also, I looked at the software for the other various keyboards and synths that they carry and all BUT the Remote Le had a way to update the OS via the template editor, thus bypassing the use of MIDI-OX. Just thought I would throw that out there. Also, now that you mention it TK, I dont know that it really matters, but both the Winbond and the SST 29ee512 appear to have been added after the rest of the board had been soldered down as they have a glue like residue around where they were added. Also the SST has a red “Y” written on it.  Check this out too, found this on some random UK wiki site:

"Despite its visual similarity to the ReMOTE and other Novation equipment, the ReMOTE LE is an entirely different beast internally. This is evident as soon as you analyze any of the SysEx data it deals with.

Not only do the templates stray from the standard Novation format, but the operating system itself (as obtained from the Novation website) is packed in a simplified form within the SYX file, and once unpacked, appears to be for an entirely different architecture/CPU to the other devices.

The OS data begins immediately after the header. Strangely this is where you’d normally expect a template name, and I’m not sure yet how the device differentiates between the two.

Translating the Packed OS

Unpacking the OS is a fairly straightforward process - each byte is split into its high 4-bits and low 4-bits, forming 2 new bytes with those bits as the least significant bits in the new bytes.

If that sounds confusing, here’s an example of how it works:

0xAB 0xCD -> 0x0A 0x0B 0x0C 0x0D

So, to get the original data back we just reverse the process:

0x0A 0x0B 0x0C 0x0D -> 0xAB 0xCD

It’s a simple case of reading the first byte, multiplying it by 16, and adding the second byte, then continuing in this pattern."

Can this be used in any way?

D