Hi Folks,

So I'm building this patch that will be controlled by a somewhat complex hardware controller that I'm building. No mouse, no keyboard, no monitor, and no midi. Midi is too slow, and doesn't provide enough resolution for analog controls (knobs et al).

What I'd like to do is build some sort of serial port / usb / ethernet interface that I can drive my shift registers and analog multiplexers with, but I really don't know where to start.

I don't think the serial external will work because (1) I can't find any documentation for the damn thing, and (2) it seems like you can only send data to the serial module, not receive data from it.

Does anyone have any ideas on where I can start with this?

I have no programming knowledge, so using a microcontroller will probably not be practical. Unless it comes out of the box as a pre-programmed SOC that can do all these things (which I think is unlikely)

Oh yeah! I also need to control this with pd!

Wow, reading back over my post, I think this will be a lot more complicated than I originally thought. Oh well, nothing's impossible.

If anyone has any ideas, and / or can point me in the right direction, I'd really appreciate it!

Thanks

I got one of these and use [hid] to interface with it. I'm making a kind of one-instrument-conductor-baton with it. When that's solid, I'm going to attempt a digital orchestra (a synthony) which follows the gestural articulation of the conductor. Getting tempo, time signature, and expressive inferrence much like a real orchestra would do.

So I think [hid] is a great place to start-> you can use almost any usb control device with it.

arduino!
www.arduino.cc

similarly, wiring, if you need more inputs.

both should work with the [pduino] external which means all your programming is done.

Wow that arduino looks awesome...

I may have to pick up a diecimila and play around with it...

Will pd grab controller data from is, or should I use HID?

arduino has it's own language, its based on the same as processing and wiring.

but lucky for us, good ol' hans has coded up some firmata and a PD object to interface with it.

http://at.or.at/hans/pd/objects.html
top of the page.

i havent really used it, but im sure a quick search through here and the mailing list will give you loads of help.

otherwise if you were willing, you could write up your own code in arduino(not that complicated really) and send OSC messages through to pd. extended should have the OSC library

Funny, I'm working on this exact thing with Arduino right now. Pduino is great, it's a library for Wiring and Aruduino that takes care of the serial messiness and i/o functions for you. I haven't had a lot of time to look in depth, but Arduino has 10 bit ADC resolution, 1024 steps. That is a hell of a lot better than midi. I'm trying to interface with analog voltage(cannibalized wah pedals if you care), and having some trouble with timing off the bat.

Perhaps we should open a topic on controller design and upload sketches and stuff.

Sounds good to me

I haven't gotten very far in the controller design from a functional perspective, I'm just working out my practical plan of attack at this point.

I'll probably pick up a diecimila and start playing with it before I get any pcbs made though, and I'm *sure* I'll have all sorts of problems with it.

Are you planning on using voltage dividers and the analog pins? That was my original intent, but I am having trouble with the timing, I think the analog data is overwhelming the [comport] object. A better option may be high-res rotary encoders and and matrix multiplexer. I just have to figure out how to hack a rotary encoder onto my wah pedals.

I'm not really sure what voltage dividers do...

My controller is comprised of buttons, potentiometers, and LEDs, so my plan was to use shift registers to get the button state into the controller, and turn the LEDs on and off, and multiplexers to bring the analog data in

ok I've looked into voltage divider function...

I'm curious, why aren't you using resistors to bring down the voltage?