[sdiy] Beginner questions

[Oliver Keller]

Hi all,

just to give you an idea who is writing here, let me introduce myself :

My name is Oliver, I´m a bit beyond 30 *sigh*, and I live in the Southwest
of Germany. I´m working at the University of Applied Sciences, 
Kaiserslautern in the department of computer networks.

I have to admit that I´m a total newbie when it comes to PCB, soldering
etc. The only experience is making cables for the studio setup....

OTOH, I finished my studies in computer science (specializing in digital
media) and now have the opportunity to do a project at work for 
educational purposes. 

Therefore, I have some knowledge on the top end of things, but I need to
get to the very bottom too. I remember some lectures about
microcontroller programming plus I had classes and small projects in C,
C++, PHP etc. but there is not too much experience behind that. My strong
sides are on system analysis, Human Computer Interaction, Interface
Design etc.

So this is my situation : I´d like to build a hardware sequencer, mainly
because I can´t buy what I want to plus I´m very interested in
understanding the technology behind. 

It may be a pretty big thing to start with, but I don´t expect fast results, I
accept a learning curve for this topic !

Right now, I´m working on the definition of what the system should be
doing, but soon I will need to decide about programming language,
software structure, processor type and model plus all the hardware issues
like what brand and model of pots, switches etc.

Is there any FAQ out there or some tutorials that give a computer guy
some ideas about the electronic side of this ? I´ve seen that there are
some machines based on PICs, others on VARs, other on 68xxx, but I don´t
know why to prefer this or that way.

Would this list be a good point to ask about sequencing stuff as well ? 

I´m sure I´ll nag you soon with lots of questions :-) but if you like to join,
I´d be happy to discuss design and functions, by this getting a very
precise picture of what to build. However, turning the idea into a working
machine is another story. I guess the best way would be to take some time
for the project definition , and use this time to do my first steps with
practical engineering (simple devices) to learn the basics in parallel. Are
there any DIY projects you can recommend for that purpose ?

I´d like to build a MIDIcox, but without source code I can´t learn the 
things I need to know... I took a look at Jazz++ and this may be a 
foundation to build on, but then it´s not uC any more, alas.


Anyway, before this is turning into a novel, I´ll come to an end and save 
some thoughts for the next post....  so see you later,



Oliver