Bleached (DIY midi controller)

vicimity · September 24, 2020, 1:03pm

I just tried this with no success (see above).

I commented out the midi port (for bleached) in Arcologies and now it’s working even though bleached is connected. So it should be something with either Arcologies or my bleached. I have used bleached with Less Concepts and it was working great although I had some issues connecting it once. Seems to be working good now though.

Justmat · September 24, 2020, 3:41pm

so i tried moving all the action out of the main loop and putting it on an IntervalTimer (15ms). seems to be working for me, though i’m not sure this is the type of timer @zebra was talking about.

anyway, here’s a gist if you want to try it out.

gist.github.com

https://gist.github.com/justmat/c5bea4b9e2e98e9617968b0a831b692a

bleached.ino

/* Sonoclast pd knobs for TeensyLC
 
  * Modified by andrew for bleached (Teensy 3.2) 02/22/2019
 
   Copyright March 2019 - havencking@gmail.com
     This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
     it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
     the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
     (at your option) any later version.
     This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,

This file has been truncated. show original

vicimity · September 24, 2020, 3:50pm

Great. I’ll try it out later today. Did you get the same freeze as I described when pressing play/pause in Arcologies?

Justmat · September 24, 2020, 3:52pm

nope, arcologies seemed to be working fine.

vicimity · September 24, 2020, 4:46pm

no did not work, getting the same freeze behaviour. i think i need to try resoldering, just hope it’s not the smd that i can’t reach without unsoldering the teensy…

edit: tested bleached on my mac with “midi monitor” and it does not report any strange behaviour. if there was a bad solder it would behave strangely on my mac aswell (i’m guessing). i’ll have to let this rest and report back if i come up with something. thx for trying to help me out @Justmat & @zebra!

edit#2: I found a solution that is probably good to implement in the ‘official’ code for bleached. In the main loop I added

  while (usbMIDI.read()) {
    // read & ignore incoming messages
  }

This filters out incoming midi preventing the freezing loop that happened to me.

alley_cam · September 29, 2020, 6:51pm

LOVE THESE, packed one in my Norns case on vacation and had a blast

psychic_chasm · September 29, 2020, 7:10pm

love it! did you plan to share .dxf?

alley_cam · September 29, 2020, 7:27pm

Will share for sure! I have a v2 i am working on with some changes.

Idea is to have no mounting screws on top (with the pots mounted to a floating panel) and have an LED light tunnel (same as on teletype)

Pro tip on Ponoko aluminum panels, they are cheap and fast but they arrive more or less raw. Some filing helps smooth things out but they are dirt and fingerprint magnets without a top coat of something like polyurethane.

I haven’t ordered from Front Panel Express but what I have seen they seem to make a more finished panel.

I am tempted to put some elbow grease into finishing these further at home but I don’t want to eat aluminum swarf in my cereal for a month

okyeron · September 29, 2020, 8:01pm

Oooooh. Good to know. The edges are raw or the surfaces? I thought they offered an anodized surface sp was curious how it would work out.

(Pix look like raw, not-anodized surface)

infovore · September 29, 2020, 9:49pm

I can thoroughly recommend the ResponsiveAnalogRead library, which can handle the polling / checking if changed / hysteresis for you in a neat tiny bundle. There’s some examples of it in use inside 16n, although the examples in the library are just fine. It’ll work neatly with Teensy, as well.

alley_cam · September 29, 2020, 9:59pm

Surface is not too bad but definitely rough
Edges are sharp and have a bunch of burrs and some weird cut marks. A file cleans it up fine but I am curious how the stainless steel would turn out from them.

Might just go full Waterworld and order carbon steel for the next project. Embrace the rust.

marcus_fischer · September 29, 2020, 10:51pm

wow those look great!

alley_cam · October 1, 2020, 11:26pm

Thanks for the kind words yall
Hit it with the sandpaper / steel wool (which erased my hip engraved line, OOPS)
Lowered the profile with countersunk screws on bottom panel / nylon nuts under PCB instead of standoff
Experimenting with Plasti-dip spray on bottom panel to replace rubber feet. We’ll see how it holds up.

vicimity · October 22, 2020, 1:15pm

Finally got my panels thanks to a friendly little brother who works at a cool company doing gadgets. Now I need to hunt down some screws. BOM only got me 1 which is definitely 7 to few

That’s what I get for not paying attention.

claasp · March 22, 2021, 2:16am

wow these look beautiful, i think it’s time to build a couple. ahh if only one could get i2c out like the 16n

@andrew do you happen to have any extra pcbs laying around, or does oshpark just have it on file?

looks like such a great little norns companion:)

Fardles · March 27, 2021, 12:42pm

Thank you so much @andrew for all these resources. Tracked everything down a few weeks ago and managed to receive the last parts today from Mouser. This evening was the first time soldering (apart from playing around with my grandfather’s tools when I was young).

This was my first ever DIY project, and it works! I was really afraid because some of the header pins were closer to each other than I expected, and I did solder some of them together accidentally but managed to salvage it. Some of the pins were also longer than the bottom spacers were tall, so I had to bend some of them a little to get them to fit.

The relief when I saw the stream of numbers in test_inputs was palpable. Thanks again, @andrew!

mei · April 11, 2021, 9:28pm

such a cutie!

landt · July 3, 2021, 2:30am

this was a fun project, first time working with pcbs I had manufactured, thanks @Andrew for making this open for us other humans

excited too to checkout @Justmat firmware too

well done

Thhhh · August 14, 2021, 6:51pm

Dumb question, but this is the first diy project that is not out of a kit for my sake: LC can be used instead of 3.2, right? Also, they have everything on mouser except the M spacers: any M2.5x5mm spacers will do, right?

Edit: I found these. They have the same specs, so they should work, right?

eigen · August 15, 2021, 6:20am

i have built mine w/ a teensy LC and it works wonders (w/ no changes to the code or anything).

likewise, only the top and bottom row outer pins need to be wired to the circuit board (as only 7 analog ins are used).
so no need for as many pin headers as suggested by the BOM / build guide.