Practical Usage

Author: rt

  • MRe-2: XBee Midi emitter

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    rt
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    In the previous post, I  explained that I temporarily abandoned trying to use the RFM12B radio transceiver to exchange Midi information between two devices. This post explains how I successfully used the XBee radio transceiver to achieve sending information between a Midi source and a computer. The XBee radio comes in many different versions. The…

  • MRe-1: A special version of the MP-1: A Midi Transmitter

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    A special version of the MP-1 was built to get MIDI data from the Vortex and send it wirelessly to a computer for further processing. I have decided to name it the Midi Remote Emitter 1 (MRe-1). In fact, the electronics is the same as the MP-1, but the Midi-Out port was not put in,…

  • Alesis Vortex: A better Manual: Functional Description and Midi Programming Guide

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    This Alesis Vortex User Guide is available as a PDF file. UPDATE 2013/11/7: Alesis posted a new firmware (1.20) and the Vyzex Patch Editing software on their site. I posted about the changes here. The new Firmware/Software combination kind of makes this page less relevant. I tested the manual programming of the new Firmware (1.20) changes.…

  • Alesis Vortex – First Review: What’s inside? (Tear Down)

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    I received an Alesis Vortex today: Of course, I will do a user review.  I also did a functional review. But first, a tear-down! (As usual, a click on the picture will enlarge it) I will try to be precise when describing the placement of parts: the Vortex is seen in this picture as a…

  • Jeenode: Interference

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    Because of the previous post, I decided to  test a bit more. To see if I could physically move the board to reduce interference. So I connected the Arduino with the attached RFM12B radio module. The one using the Sparkfun MIDI breakout board. As I was clearing the desk, I placed the Arduino on a…

  • RFM12B: Dealing with radio interference

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    This is a screenshot from the serial monitor of a Jeenode (Arduino compatible) connected to my computer. It runs a program that will listen to incoming radio messages through its RFM12B radio transceiver. In this window, you can clearly see too lines that start with “OK”. These are real messages coming from my EM-1 Energy Monitor.…

  • MP-1: Improving reliability with ACK and adding a PANIC! button

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    Since the Jeenode’s RFM12B is a bit slow (transceiving at 49.2K bps) and midi is a bit slower at 31250 bps, the processor doesn’t have much time to process all the traffic. Keep in mind that the Jeenode has to be able to receive MIDI messages on the serial port, receive incoming wireless transmissions through…

  • MP-1: Adding a small display… and a rotary encoder

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    A display is necessary to be able to really augment the functionalities of the MP-1. A couple of LEDs blinking is fine for Power-ON and Battery status, but a small display adds much more flexibility. Since one version of the test setup is using a Jeenode, I will be using a Jeelab display with the Jeelab…

  • MP-1: Wireless testing and midi commands

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    The MP-1 will include a wireless interface. I decided to test the possibilities of the technology I chose. Mainly, I will be using an RFM12B transceiver to exchange data between components. So, I designed a very simple interface using off-the-shelf parts: An Arduino and an RFM12B radio. Because I wanted to test MIDI data trasmission…

  • Re-thinking the PU-2 interface: long live the MP-1

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    A lot of work was done on the PU-2 over the last many months by Emanuele and I. More specifically, we wrote hundreds of line of code to make the FCB1010 work with Banks of Stompbox mode midi commands. This is the main feature of the next version of the firmware. At the same time,…