Converting a D8B to a full fledged DAW Controller (w/o MIDI)

[Marc Girard]

Hello all,

I still don't know if it will be possible to switch between "DAW" and "Mixer" mode yet. There's much work to be done on the software sides of things now, can't promise anything today! The goal is to make the d8b talk MCU, afterward, it's all icing on the cake really! In theory, it would be possible to install a DB25 serial switcher between the DAW computer and the d8b computer. The thing is that the faders won't reflect the current position of the current selected computer, there's no "refresh" command really on any of those, they're not designed with this in mind.

I'll keep you guys posted!

Marc

[Marc Girard]

I'm assuming that accommodating Mac DAWs is out of the question.

Actually Peter, we'll surely support Macs... Our development software is completely cross-platform!

[Casey_Pittman]

Marc,

If there is no refresh for switching between mixer or DAW then how does the "Fader motors off" button work? Is it something that the Brain Board takes care of? The OS remembers where the fader needs to be & the faders just "sync" back into place? Much like how a DAW loads and then recalls the faders to what ever control surface is connected to it?

I maybe totally wrong here, just thinking out loud. But I am interested in seeing this come to light no matter what incarnation it may be.

I still think a "thru box" would be a good idea to get basic DSP functions to allow for partial use for the control room section for things like 2 track A B C, Digital in 1&2, and the talkback function.

I may be too wide eyed for all this to happen right off the bat.

Interested to hear(read) your thoughts.

-Casey

[Francois Vezina]

Hello all... The "Frank" in question that Marc is talking about is me

I have taken control of the VU meters and the character display (not too hard for the character display mind you but there was a little trick to know on how to clear the screen). I will be showing this to Marc in the morning (it's 1:45am here, time to hit the sack soon). Refresh rate of 20fps for all the VU meters (configurable - it can actually go at a maximum of 50fps without a problem). The little video I sent Marc has the VU meters update running will the character display shows some scrolling text and then I'm updating every VU meters with a random value - quite fast if you ask me... we may post this later. There's just one tiny bit of an issue that I need to figure out - the refresh is very fast but for some reason there are glitches here and there... I need to see if this is related to the serial port or something...

The question was asked if MAC will be supported... I'm writing the code in java at the moment. I know that Mac OSX has its own version of java so I don't know how much will be supported but I am not using anything special other than a communications jar file that is needed (in Windows it needs the jar, a dll and a properties file). We will have to test our application on MAC when we get it further done

Next thing on the display refresh will be the time stamp and the channel. Once that is done I'll start working on reading/updating all the faders... then, well, we'll see

As Marc would say, we'll keep you posted!


Francois

[Petersueco]

Wow, this is really promising!

Thanks for the update, Francois.

I can tell you that almost all the members here are expecting this thing to happen. I can foresee that there is going to be a very high demand on second hand fader banks and faders.

Keep up the good work.

Peter Holmquist.

[Marc Girard]

Hello all!

First, let me welcome my good buddy Frank on the board, it's nice to have another guy to talk to! Frank sent me a video with his new routines running. The meter bridge runs so fast that the camera has a bit of a problem displaying all frames! That's good news! Frank paid tribute to our good old Commodore 64 days and wrote a text side scroller for the d8b, I laughed when I first saw this! I thought I'd share the fun, take a look right here:



This might not look like much, but let me describe what has been done:

- First try to use Java (it works, obviously!)
- Complete rewrite of init routines
- Meter Bridge routine that's WAY faster (I mean, by 300% or close!)
- New VFD Text routine that works to show info

As you can see, Frank is not screwing around, in 4 hours he improved my protoypes that took me something like a months to do! (Though, it helps when all the reverse engineering has been done for you! *Poke at Frank*)

That's it, more to come we'll start to work on faders!

Cheers all,

Marc

[sverred]

Oh my! This is so exciting!!

[FrankH]

The question was asked if MAC will be supported... I'm writing the code in java at the moment. I know that Mac OSX has its own version of java so I don't know how much will be supported but I am not using anything special other than a communications jar file that is needed (in Windows it needs the jar, a dll and a properties file). We will have to test our application on MAC when we get it further done

This brings up an interesting question: how do you propose to interface with a modern Intel MacPro? USB? FW? Ethernet? No such thing as a DB25 Serial connector on these things.

Just wondering.

[Casey_Pittman]

I believe it will be handled by a RS232 to USB adaptor. There is some discusion on it further back.

-Casey

[bitSync]

Really trying to get it...

Is this the plan: Implement a DLL translator that looks like MCU MIDI on the DAW software side and d8b raw serial comms on the d8b hardware side? If so, then I think I get it. If not, then I'm lost.

I'm so on board with the idea of switching serial comms between the DAW serial interface and the d8b CPU serial interface it's not funny. Is there a way to also integrate MIDI and a little stored SysEx to get the d8b CPU and/or the DAW to cough up the current faders/pots/mutes/etc. on switching serial interfaces?

Salivating with anticipation...