#61

Cool, thanks for the clarification, @zrnsm.

#62

Nice; I wondered if there would be some way of expanding into DIN.

Edit: is there any way to allow the 3.5mm TRS jacks to be used for a Korg/Arturia style DIN MIDI breakout cable?

#64

Good news; thanks for the update and details.

#65

Very cool project, never had an original Axoloti but liking the DC coupled ins&outsā€¦ Picked up a board and questions incoming on your forum!

#66

I wonder if it supports a screen?

1 Like
#67

Interesting development. I made a half-finished sampling groovebox with the old Axoloti core. Itā€™s a pretty cool platform for playing with DSP. This looks like itā€™ll have a lot more horsepower.

#68

There are many options for this SoC, everything from small I2C displays to (if enough pins are available) high-resolution LCDs. But itā€™s far from plug and play, youā€™d have to write some code yourself.

#69

I feel some kind of facility for a screen would be a massive improvement - if they could make this more user friendly for non coders- choose a useful screen type and have some kind of write-to-screen object within the patching software. You then could see what patch you are running, the key parameters and their values.

Iā€™m guessing this is still a possibility with hardware of this kind and could follow onā€¦

#70

Screen support is absolutely possible. Definitely something that I think is critical as an expansion. I think basic OLED is probably the most practical to keep IO usage to a minimum. The H7 processor does have an integrated LCD-TFT controller peripheral but it eats up many IO pins. I made an effort to preserve the possibility of using it in the hardware design, i.e. making sure the pins are available at test points, but I havenā€™t tried it out yet.

6 Likes
#71

Glad to see this come to fruition. I really like the new design being more compact but also having separate jacks is great and the CV is a really nice bonus. also from the photos on the site it looks like they are stackable with the ability to pass data between them?

I havenā€™t used my axo in a while and while it is part out of using other things and being lazy, I think a big thing for me was how coder focused the axoloti was with people constantly adding and modifying things and I get sick of keeping track of stuff and just want to have things work. while I appreciate its open-ended flexibility I also feel that if there was a dedicated case and controller board or a couple different controller boards with screens I could choose from Iā€™d get more into it again. Iā€™m not so interested in ordering sets of custom cut plastic for different designs and then 2 weeks later someone says the files are goofed and I need to fix it and so on. if you offered control boards and cases (i knowā€¦ more work, so onā€¦) just something to keep in mind.

#72

So I has i2c? I have the teletype + expanders + er301 on i2c, how feasible would it be to have the new axoloti run as i2c follower, controlled from the teletype? A dedicated axoloti2 eurorack module with i2c connections on the back and CV I/o + USB (for programming from computer) would be a dream!

2 Likes
#73

I think a screen is pretty much essential for a multi-use device like this, to be honest.

The lack of one (and the endless wait for the teased-but-never-forthcoming Axoloti Control board) were major factors in my losing interest in the original Axoloti board.

Iā€™m glad to see the platform getting some more love. I got the impression a couple of years ago that the original developer had pretty much lost interest in it, and was leaving support to (unpaid) 3rd parties.

That may be unfair, but scanning the site now, it doesnā€™t look like there have been any major developments there since then.

2 Likes
#74

While the developer is mostly absent from their forum, he is working on a major update, a 2.0 firmware that is available in alpha or beta state.

2 Likes
#75

I think it really depends on what youā€™re planning to do with it. I have a core without a screen (just buttons and knobs) designed for use as an effects pedal and it works fine without. My second one has a screen (2 actually, same number of pins so why not), buttons, and encoders. The design for this one was to allow parameter pages controlled by encoders, so yes a screen was necessary there.

1 Like
#76

Yeah I wouldnā€™t say a screen is necessaryā€¦ I mean this is basically a similar kind of object as crow with a really nice GUI for editing the patches if you put it behind a 2hp panelā€¦ It already takes euro power levels.

1 Like
#77

Iā€™ve never been a fan of the Axoloti Patcher.

#78

And I donā€™t like bell peppersā€¦ Care to elaborate? Itā€™s a straightforward GUI for patching together a large number of objects in the Axoloti environment. And from what iā€™m hearing, @zrnsm is working on a version specific to the Akso so it will be likely improved. Perhaps your helpful, well-thought insight as to what you donā€™t like about it could be helpful to future development.

5 Likes
#79

You donā€™t like peppers? How odd :wink:

Sorry, yes, that was arguable a bit glib.

From memory (and itā€™s been a while since I used it), my thoughts were that it would benefit greatly from an interface more like Quartz Composer, with separate/dockable ā€œInspectorā€ palette to aid more detailed editing of things like CC mappings.

This paradigm is very common in node-based editors and programming environments, including the editing software for the much less capable (in hardware terms) Patchblocks platform (modelled very much on Max)

I also thought there could make much better use of colour to differentiate different object types, and the ability to assign custom colours to aid patch readability.

Better support for zooming would have been nice, too (though this may have been addressed more recently).

I also thought the tying of left-to-right arrangement of objects visually to execution order was awkward, necessitating too much horizontal scrolling, with more complex patches.

I felt that, more generally, the reliance on Java for the GUI hobbled the developers ability to produce a modern-looking interface, and to respond to user feedback on usability and styling.

All these issues had been brought up repeatedly on the product forum, but never seemed to get addressed.

1 Like
#80

Very much agree that a dockable inspector and object browser would be great additions.

#81

Thatā€™s cool. Maybe I will dig my Axolotis out of the drawer, then :slight_smile:

Iā€™m honestly more excited about my Norns and Fates, though, right now, thought.

Having said that, as I said earlier, Iā€™m happy to see there have been developments in the Axolotiverse, and the new hardware does look a Lot more powerful than the original, which Iā€™m sure will open up many new possibilities.