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Wrapping Up Controller Testing
Date: 20/6/2011
Tags: axefx 		So in the last few days I've finished the controller test board, ironed out a few bugs in the firmware code, hooked up the midi ports and tested that they are sending and receiving the right data. The board looks like it's doing all the things it's meant too. Which means I can now start moving ahead on making the kit available. What's left to do is write up the documentation of how to build a kit from the parts and PCB and work out the business details, like shipping weights/costs and a purchase page.

Today I also printed out the new graphics that are laid out for the Hammond box and checked them for accuracy.

It's sitting next to the prototype box, which is a different aspect ratio. The plan is to get someone to print it out onto adhesive backed vinyl and then stick it straight onto the aluminium, cut the holes out with a hobby knife and then poke all the pots, switches and LED's through. There are some more knobs coming from the UK for both my own controller and the kits.
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Controller Update
Date: 16/6/2011
Tags: axefx 		Last night I got some time to work on the MIDI controller testing. The problem I was left with is that the parameter knobs were not working, so I started with printing out the current value for param0 on the LCD and it was always 1023 (the maximum value) no matter what voltage was supplied on the input pin. So I teared down all the setup code and checked that I was doing everything right in the software... which after an hour or so of re-reading all the docs... yes; I'm doing everything right. Ok that leaves hardware. So I measured the voltage on the input pin again... yup that's right too. *sigh* Then I notice there is a "VREF" pot on the AVR stamp... wonder what that does? Tweak tweak... oooh look the value on the LCD is finally changing! Seems that VREF pot on the stamp is controlling something to do with the way the AVR reads values on it's analog in pins, so I'll have to write that into the documentation to set correctly when assembling the kit. So hurrah the parameters are all working pretty much correctly and I can test the new menu code on the hardware. I'm getting close to being done with the testing. All that remains is hooking up the MIDI sockets and checking the right messages get sent and received.
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Midi Foot-controller Update
Date: 14/6/2011
Tags: axefx 		Last night I investigated whether I could compile and flash the ROM from Windows7 64bit. The compiling side was fine, I could build the binary but the program I was using to flash that binary onto the AVR chip via the parallel port doesn't work on Windows7-64bit. Which isn't to say you can't do AVR development on Win7 but it just means that different software is needed. On XP I've been using PonyProg2000 with a lot of success.

On the hardware front, I wired up all the pots to the test harness and checked they were applying the right voltage to the analog pins. I've soldered those onto the PCB traces and not the pads because it's a pain removing wires from pads and then trying to get the solder out and put something else in.

Software wise I have re-written the menu and not everything is hooked up at the moment. So I spent some time uncommented some sections of the controller code and got them compiling with the new menu layout. The structure of things in memory (both RAM and EEPROM) has changed to make things more flexible and those changes need to be propagated out to all the rest of the code. (Parts that didn't compile originally have been commented out). Also I put together a Visual Studio 2005 project for the desktop version of the controller.

And I'm loving zip ties at the moment... they make things so much more organized.
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64bit Adventures
Date: 11/6/2011
Tags: coding scribe 		I've been playing around with 64bit builds of Scribe on windows. And it's been er... interesting to say the least.
  • By default the Visual Studio 2005 installed doesn't install the x64 compiler and libraries. Nice...
  • When you do get that installed, and then create an x64 profile in your solution you get the option to copy the settings from the 32bit profile. Which for the most part works, but when you try and compile said x64 profile, you discover this delightful error: 
    fatal error LNK1112: module machine type 'x64' conflicts with target machine type 'X86'
    Which in a nutshell means you are linking 64bit objects into a 32bit binary. However the standard response that people get on the forums is that you have to set your Linker- >Advanced->TargetMachine correctly. And you know what? Well it WAS set correctly to MachineX64. So what gives? Well if you click on Linker->CommandLine and look in "Additional Options" you'll see /MACHINE:I386. Sigh.
  • When running Windows7 64bit and you put additional 32bit DLL's in C:\Windows\System32 you'd think... that since there is a "32" in that folder name that is where they go. Well no... the 64bit DLL's go in System32 and the 32bit DLL's go in "System". Gaaaaahhhhh.
But at the end of the day, there it is... 64bit Scribe:
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Foot Controller Setup Menu
Date: 7/6/2011
Tags: axefx 		So last night I rewrote the setup menu of the Axefx Footcontroller software. Basically before it was very simple, had one level of editing where you could scroll through all the parameters fairly easily. However you were quite limited in what you could do with the IA buttons (send one CC) and knob parameters (send one CC). Also the "Amp Mode" has hard coded. Also it was hard coded to 3 IA buttons, not flexible if there were more than that.

The new menu system has much more flexibility. Basically you have 5 levels of menus, I know it sounds like a lot, but it's manageable. The first level is simply picking between the pre-preset settings and the global settings. In the preset settings, you have 3 sections for the IA buttons, and the "grouping" setting for making the IA's mutually exclusive. Inside the IA button settings you now have 2 commands (limited by the EEPROM memory in the current AVR), where each command (4 bytes) is one of:
  • None - send no command
  • CC - send a CC between [min] and [max]
  • Block - turn an axefx block on/off
  • Sysex - axefx sysex set parameter [block], [param] between [min] and [max]
So you can do 2 things with any given IA button. Most of the time you'd want to just use one command to switch a block on or off. But now there is some flexibility to do more things if needed.

Now in the global menu there is 3 sections for the different parameter modes (parameters are the 6 knobs and 2 external controllers). The modes are "Normal", "Amp1" and "Amp2". In normal mode the default operation is to send a midi CC command, with the default settings being the axefx EXTERN1 to EXTERN8 midi CC's. Amp1 and Amp2 mode default to sending axefx sysex command's that map to the Gain/Bass/Mid/Treble/Presence/Master for the Amp1 and Amp2 block. That mode change is tied to a 3 position hardware switch on the box somewhere. Each of those (3) modes has 8 parameter settings, that each have again 2 commands. The command editing is exactly the same options as the IA's.

Then you also have the Tuner CC and Tempo CC, the midi channel and the factory reset function. The factory reset just configures all the IA's for every preset to do nothing and makes the global parameters do all the default things for the different modes.

All in all it's now looking and feeling much better. The hardware testing is coming along nicely. I'm still working on dialing in the LCD code... it's being a little finicky. But hopefully I'll get it sorted tonight.
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Footcontroller Photos
Date: 6/6/2011
Tags: axefx 		Some more photos of the footcontroller PCB kit:

  
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