[sdiy] Electronic organs revisted: using organ manuals and pedals for synth DIY projects, etc

[aankrom]

A cool thing I've noticed about some microcontrollers, PICs I think, 
you can get them from programmers who put bootloader code on it to make 
it easier to program with a PC. At least I think that's what you'd call 
it. I'm remembering snippets from the MIDIBox site. How cheap is it to 
get into programming microcontrollers? How easy is it to do if you use a 
MacBook Pro with OSX 10.6? Would I need to break out my old Sony Vaio 
running XP with only 384MB of RAM (and a P3). My biggest fear with 
microcontrollers is having a project become orphaned due to deprecated 
and obsolete parts. I guess it's not as bad as the old days when you 
programmed EPROMs. I've been disappointed a few times when I see a cool 
looking project that I found on the web, but it uses an EPROM and the 
code is nowhere to be found. BTW, I have TONS of the older 
microcontrollers, like Motorola 6803's (nice bling) and scads of 80XX's. 
I even have some Z80's, but that's only a microcontroller by today's 
standards. OK, rambling mode OFF...

Is there a nice cheap setup that just needs a USB port? What's a good 
choice for synth-DIY? I see a lot of projects in Nuts & Volts, but maybe 
there's something best suited to synth needs. I've been getting annoyed 
with Nuts & Volts because I want more projects that let me use up the 
parts I've scrounged - nevermind that a PIC or some Atmel could it 
smaller. I guess I'm an analog snob - at least when it comes to rolling 
my own.

AA

On Sun, 18 Sep 2011 15:38:25 +0100, Tom Wiltshire wrote:
> On 18 Sep 2011, at 14:43, aankrom wrote:
>
>> I've been avoiding projects that use microcontrollers for years. I 
>> guess they've become so ubiquitous in the DIY sphere that I should 
>> really get on the ball.
>
> They're useful for certain stuff - essential even. I wouldn't try
> building a programmable synth without one, for instance. And even for
> keyboard scanning, they're much simpler than the alternatives.
>
>
>> I _did_ have plans to build a MIDIBox because I have one of the 
>> supported LCD displays from an old gigantic HP printer. I haven't been 
>> to that site in a while. I wonder if there's a keyboard scanner 
>> project. Do you have a link for the design you used with the PIC 
>> 16F676?
>
> Checking the board, it's actually a 16F73 that I used. The schematic
> shows a 16F628A. Not that it makes much difference - these chips 
> share
> the same pinouts, and it is only peripheral features and RAM/Rom
> amounts that vary between chips.
>
> Please find the schematic below. I'd forgotten, but I added a buffer
> and some LEDs so I could see what I was doing when I was testing it.
> I've got  code for this if you do get into microcontrollers.
>
> Regards,
> Tom