[sdiy] presets on a modular

[Richard Wentk]

At 13:15 11/11/2004 +0000, Paul Maddox wrote:
>Richard,
>
> > I think you need toggles not momentaries. Unless you have *extremely* long
> > arms, like Klaus Schulze does. (Apparently.)
>
>he does, but he's also nearly 7 foot tall, which is probably why.
>I don't think you'd need toggles, Look at Alan McKerchers HUGE system, 30+
>modules and growing, and yet you can reach both corners of it.

The usual rule is that - as per Mr Da Vinci's famous illustration - arm 
span is equal to height.

So we're talking about 5.5 to 6.5 feet. for the average human. Which 
*might* be enough. But I do have a three cabinet design sketch somewhere 
that's quite a bit wider than that.

On the subject of which - how do you extend the system to multiple 
cabinets? It's easy with patchcords...

>I would still use momentaries, because you can do the 'latch' in logic..
>So if you wanted to see where something was being modulated FROM, you could
>latch the input and see where it was originating.

Okay, I didn't *literally* mean toggles, because that would annoying, 
expensive and rather stupid.

I had in mind those famous pianokey-ish with LED switches that the JP8, P5 
and others use some variation on.

Yes indeed, the latching would be done in logic. Actually you'd probably do 
the usual thing and scan the LEDs via a matrix instead of latching them 
directly. Seeing as you have to scan the switches anyway, this makes a 
certain kind of sense.

> > If you have voltage level of sensing of pots with a uC, then an
>alternative
> > would be to lose the input toggles and put an LED next to each pot. So
> > you'd create a link by moving the destination pot instead of pushing a
> > switch. One stage less, and slightly less hardware.
>
>Hmmm, a good idea, not sure about how to impliment that. given that some
>modules (like a VCO) will have only a few inputs and outputs, but could have
>8 knobs. and bareing mind that the bus only cators for 4 inputs and 4
>outputs.

You expand the bus. :-)

4x4 really isn't enough, especially for something like a voltage 
scanner/selector.

The ideal would be total assignability, so you could assign and reserve the 
required number of ins and outs per module at build time.

Richard