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

[Marc Girard]

Hey guys,

Frank really pulled a crazy one tonight! Take a good look at the latest video, there's some glitches going on in the meter bridge. Frank busted his ass off finding the bug... Thing is that the d8b pairs the meters and the addressing a little weird. Frank managed to hack the d8b OS firmware and changed it! He even added a new serial command that just works with one led meter instead of pairs, like Mackie did... Man, that's some heavy stuff! Sent me a new video, the meters are SUPER smooth now! YES!

MG

[JamesBond]

Hello Marc,
sounds good what you re going to plan!! I read the whole discussion and asking myself, when this whole thing is ready for using it on the d8b's. Is there a current schedule?? I would investigate in that project Sounds absolutely great.. so i can throw away my Logic/MAckie Controls

The d8b is used standalone without CPU right? So how should the software go into the d8b? Flash the internal Rom via Midi??

Exciting project... cant wait when its able to run all 24 Channel in HUI Mode controlling Logic etc.

Best

Tom

[Petersueco]

Hey guys,

Frank really pulled a crazy one tonight! Take a good look at the latest video, there's some glitches going on in the meter bridge. Frank busted his ass off finding the bug... Thing is that the d8b pairs the meters and the addressing a little weird. Frank managed to hack the d8b OS firmware and changed it! He even added a new serial command that just works with one led meter instead of pairs, like Mackie did... Man, that's some heavy stuff! Sent me a new video, the meters are SUPER smooth now! YES!

MG

OK, I can see the glitches on the meters and I can understand the necessity to upgrade the firmware, but what firmware are your talking about? And, if you hack it, will the console be able to work normally with the hacked firmware?

When you say that he added new command that works with one led meter instead of pairs, do you mean that we will have doble meter resolution?

It's amazing how long you guys have evolved this project. Keep up with this wonderful work.

Peter Holmquist.

[Marc Girard]

Hey guys,

As I explained a few weeks/months ago, the d8b needs a firmware to work and communicate with the outside world. The d8b is loading the firmware every time it boots, that's the famous "Loading Mackie OS..." line on the VFD display. Each time you guys power up your PSU/CPU, the firmware gets sent to the d8b board and it gets initialized. Once it's done, you can see "Mackie D8B OS, Version xxx"... Means that the board is up and running. Next, we get the DSP init and the rest...

So, Frank's custom firmware will be included in our software, it makes no difference to the end user really. Instead of sending Mackie's original firmware (like we always did), we're gonna send our own.

As for dead lines for this project, I don't wanna commit to a date right now. This project is about reverse engineering and hacking. We are not getting any help from Mackie and/or from anyone, we're really on our own here. I did try to reach Bob Tudor and anyone at Mackie/Loud that could help, they simpled replied: It's confidential info, we're not giving it away.

So as of now, we got the d8b figured out. That was the hard part. Now, there's the MIDI part ahead of us. Fortunately, the MCU protocol is documented and more open. It shouldn't be as hard to implement since we've got the info available. Then again, no promises made, we never know what we might run into!

MG

[Marc Girard]

hen you say that he added new command that works with one led meter instead of pairs, do you mean that we will have doble meter resolution?

It's amazing how long you guys have evolved this project. Keep up with this wonderful work.

Hey Peter,

Unfortunately, the d8b meters are 12 leds only. The meter bridge was designed that way, I looked at the schematics to make sure... They make it look like there's 24, but 12 max, sorry! Nothing we can do about it.

Thanks for the kind words,

MG

[m33]

Francois Vezina and Marc Girard , you sirs, are my firmware hacking, d8b reviving, CPU bypassing heroes. Godspeed gentlemen.

[MOSHWITZ]

Francois Vezina and Marc Girard , you sirs, are my firmware hacking, d8b reviving, CPU bypassing heroes. Godspeed gentlemen.

Amen

MOSHON
DAVE

[Petersueco]

Hey Peter,

Unfortunately, the d8b meters are 12 leds only. The meter bridge was designed that way, I looked at the schematics to make sure... They make it look like there's 24, but 12 max, sorry! Nothing we can do about it.

Thanks for the kind words,

MG

Yeah, 12 double-looking leds !!! That was my original believe about the d8b meters. What a shame they did it that way.

I was thinking about the red-green leds and I guess it could be very interesting to have them reflect the Read and Write status for that channel. I'm talking Cubase-Nuendo colour code here: Read=Green Write=Red.

Will we be able to use the aux send buttons and the v-pots to control the sends?

Could the buss assign buttons be used to load plugins in the slots 1 to 8.

What buttons can not be mapped? Do you have a list of MCU's commands.

Just brainstorming here. There is a lot of stuff that can be implemented using the master section. Maybe some plugin control using the fat channel and the VFD...

Peter Holmquist.

[andy_eade]

This may be the single most exciting innovation since the D8B was launched - amazing work. I (and I'm sure countless others) watch in astonishment with our fingers crossed for this

Many thanks and keep up the great work!

Andy

[Marc Girard]

Hello all,

Just wanted to let you know that we're not dead! We're trying to make our MIDI routines to work OK. We're having troubles with Windows 7's MIDI procedures... I'll keep you informed.

MG