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wooo, well. I didn’t get around to the treadmill tonight or to recording a 3rd performance. I *DID* implement two kinda nice new features.

1. midi channel select fader mode. After doing these two solo perfs at home, I realized that if I had another kong loaded up and listening on midi channel 16, I could use faders to flip from channel 1 to channel 16 with confidence (all the way up, all the way down) … and that might help me transition from one preset to another. That would maybe free my other instrument up on the other dj mixer channel from *having* to have a kick drum in it.

2. octave adjust knob mode… this basically modifies the midi note number by a factor of 12 as you change it. I couldn’t figure out how to get max/msp to change all of the midi note numbers as I sent the new osc message to steppa… so it just modifies the value when the fader changes the midi note number. So, the knob range is octave adjust -3 to +5 … that covers everything… I probably over complicated it like this, but… just trying to keep things working as-is and then using the working state as the point of reference… (we start at midi note number 36. so any octave adjust is going to be relative to 36 being the “start”… so hence -3 octaves to get to midi note number 1… )

The user interface on the LCD is wiggity weird, but the functionality is pretty fun. I’m starting to wonder if we should have some way to turn off features you never use if you like. it’s starting to turn into a lot of paging…

So yeah, steppa, roxor, and the arduino firmware all need updating to get at this new stuff… uploads coming soon. I feel like I want to think about the interface a bit more before I unleash this on you.

As usual, when you don’t hear from us, we’re cooking up new stuff. Here’s the assembly video for the version 4.0 circuit board.

The main new features of version 4 are:

* changed form factor to accommodate being able to be placed in a new case that I’ve sourced.
* added a parameter record button. This is going to be awesome, so more info will come when we’ve been able to bake the sequencer more for this feature.
* improved the placement of the arduino mega so that the USB port is closer to the edge of the board
* improved all of the hole sizes for the LED tact buttons
* when I though to, I added secondary holes for potentiometers in case you ever need that.
* added a small prototyping area for ad-hoc needs.
* hardwired the mode button LEDs up to 5V so that they’re on all the time, which freed up three pins on the arduino. One of those was used for the parameter record button
* TWO UNUSED PINS. They’re digital in, and PWM out. You could put two more buttons on here, or switches, or LEDs… or serial devices and drive input/output with softwareserial in the arduino code. You could, in theory, add two more LCD screens using the moderndevice.com driver boards or similar serial input display drivers. All kinds of things. Oh, Maybe you want to add a couple of midi ports? Hmm!
* generally labeled a lot of things on the board so you know what you’re looking at.
* had to rewire an awful lot of stuff to make the autorouter happy. So consequently, the firmware has changed somewhat significantly. I don’t exactly know what the right method is going to be to keep the 3.x units up to date, but we’ll get something figured out.

known problems:
* one of the buttons needs a jumper wire to ground. I’ll certainly get that fixed next time I order boards, but it’s an extremely minimal bug fix to perform.

pending any kind of hold my board house may have for my order, I’m expecting a new small batch of boards to arrive in a couple of weeks. There are a couple of changes that I hope will translate to improvements.

1. the older style potentiometers that required headers, wiring, and holes drilled through the circuit board are now replaced by pcb-mount style potentiometers. I’ve tried really hard to get it right, so I’m hoping I did.

2. fader mounting holes are resized to be the correct size… or.. a better size. I’d made an error on the v3.1 boards in forgetting to fix the problem I saw on the v3 boards. So they should go in easy peasy now.

3. mounting holes are going to be fabricated by the board house. It took me a while to figure out that I can get them to do that for me. 🙂 The net result is that a significant amount of work will be reduced to a couple of machining operations once I get the boards. The cost to get them to do the final machining operations was far outweighed by my ability to do it on my bandsaw in no time.

4. Electrical testing. This extra board house option will further increase my confidence in the product I sell. I could test the boards myself, but I’d rather be working on more creative things. I figured it was best to leave this important step up to people who are experts at quality control.

man, I thought making beatseqrs was hard. Pfft, easy town compared to this:

http://www.archive.org/details/VisittoW1950_2

I have beatseqr v3.1 unassembled kits available. The assembly is pretty straight forward, with only a couple of weird things you’ll need to do to undo some of the issues I’m reworking for the next version, whenever that ends up being. This version works, and aside from some slightly inconvenient assembly steps, it’s relatively easy work.

Fully built and battle tested with hard acrylic keys, acrylic case & knobs, $349
Kit with arduino mega, $249
Kit with NO arduino mega, $199

kit prices do not include buttons, case, knobs, or cables. contact steve@beatseqr.com for more info.

Derek made a great new overview video for our Maker Faire booth, check it out: