PU-2: Additional functions

I’m getting a lot of feedback from musicians who follow the development of the PU-2 pedal board. A lot has to do with demands for more details on existing functions, but some people ask for functions that the PU-2 doesn’t offer… yet!

So far, two new functions have been prompted by public demand. The first one is an analog volume control on the expression pedals and the second one is a general query for more flexibility (even more than already offered?) on command strings.

The analog volume control is going to be implemented as soon as I can get the parts. I will be using Silonex optocouplers. They are quite simple: a LED shine onto a photo-sensitive resistor. The advantage of using Silonex: very low distortion in the audio spectrum. I will test direct volume control first. This is just using the optocoupler in series with the guitar signal. If that doesn’t work well, I will use a simple op-amp circuit. I figure that I can add the analog volume control circuits for less than $20 per pedal board. I might offer it as an option.

The added flexibility in theĀ  input file format is software only. Basically, I want the pedal board to accept any command, Midi or not. For example, many peripherals understand SysEx chains but are not very flexible on the Midi command side. My plan is to modify the program running on the PC to read any command line in the input CSV file and transfer it to the pedal board. For example, a SysEx string could be stored in the file and identified using a special command type (why not use SX?) which would signal theĀ  translation program to leave the remaining bytes alone and pass them to the pedal board untouched. Another option would be to allow direct sending of any SysEx file to the pedal board, only limited by the size of the memory chip used.

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