Hi all,
I just about finished my MBLC so I thought I’de post a few photos to see if you lot have any suggestions for the graphics of the case.
The construction is finished (a part from a few small things like wiring up the MIDI activity LED’s). I only have to customize the MBLC app for my DIN/DOUT pin configuration and the LCD.
A bit of a discription
The case is recycled from an old (1990ish) radio DAW production system, the Orban DSE7000. Back in the day this was the sh*t when it came to quick and eazy production of radio spots. The system was origanaly designed by AKG. The system had a control surface that connected to a tower PC with propritary audio and storage hardware and a custom OS. The whole system had a cool little trolly to sit in.
I brought the control surface and trolly for “trademe”, New Zealands ebay. The tower PC had long since been separated from the controller, so I didn’t feel bad about retrofitting MB hardware in it.
The controller and trolly cost me $300 NZ ($1NZ = $0.71US at the time of writing the NZ dollar is very strong). This proved to be a real bargin, a nice case, 10 100mm faders, 40 quality backlit buttons and a very nice jog wheel.
I stripped the orignal PCB’s of all the buttons, faders and other useful components. This took a long time as I had to be very careful not to damage the buttons through over heating the pins. After that I spent two weeks of evenings measuring the case very accuratly and making drawings of the case in a CAD program. The I printed the drawing in 1:1 scale (A2) to check it against the real case to check the size was right. This was a very important step because I wanted to design and make PCB’s for the buttons and encoders. I used the CAD drawing as the template for the positioning of components on my PCB’s. If my CAD drawing was wrong so would the PCB’s. After lots of fiddling to get it right I set about designing 4 PCB’s, 1 for the encoders I wanted to add, 1 for the buttons on the right side(front view), 1 for the buttons above the faders and 1 for the navagation buttons and the jog wheel (which I am yet to make). The process of designing and building the PCB’s took about 4 weeks to get that right (lots of desing deadends and things not being in the right place).
The method I used to make the PCB’s was to lazer print the mask onto the backing of adhesive lables, the ironing it on to the copper clad board, this worked really well, I’m very happy with the way the PCB’s came out. I drilled the PCB’s with a drill press (I brought a cheap drill press of the job). Then laquared the boards to prevent oxidization of the copper.
When the boards were ready I soldered the buttons, resistors and headers to the PCB’s. Soldering the Buttons was alot trickery than you might think, the problem once againg was getting the position of the buttons just right so that they would fit thru the holes on the front panel, remain straight, not scrape on the case when pushed. Because alot of the buttons being arranged in a “matrix” fasion it was very important that the buttons were square with each other, if thay weren’t the professional apperance would be comprimised. The way I got everything lined up correctly was it build a jig with strips of precisly cut wood and lay them between the buttons to hold the spaceing constant and even, I then clamped the jig in place and soldered the buttons to the board. This worked very well too, took alot of time but was worth it because you only get one shot at getting it right with out damaging anything.
This is a view of the inside of the unit.
You can see the 40 x 4 Character LCD on the top right (green pcb)
I’ve got to change the MBLC app a bit to get the disply right.
After I compleated the PCB’s I started to build the core module and a combined DIN/DOUT module.
This is the Core module, built on matrix board, (I like building stuff on matrix board believe it or not), I’m going to add a bankstick IC socket when I get round to it.
This is the intergrated DIN/DOUT module, DIN’s on the left and DOUT’s on the right. I used 9 DIN IC’s and 6 DOUT IC’s. as you can see there are some buttons and LED’s I’m yet to connect.
I’m in the process of adapting the MIOS MBLC application to my needs, I’ve got to lose about half of the buttons so I have to decide what to keep and what to ditch. I was thinking about the possiblity of using the GPL and map the remaining functions to that, don’t know how hard that will be as it’s just an idea at this stage.
Because I was lazy when I connected the ribbion cables from the Button/LED PCB’s to the DIN/DOUT PCB’s I have to do LOTS of pin reassignment in the source code. It’s confusing as hell, but it’s less hassle doing it in the software, rather than messing with the hardware.
Anyway thats enough of an essay on that.
So what do you all think
Regards
Rowan
