Hey Mike and all,
Well I'm back again to mull over more ideas on doing a breakout of controls buried inside the Hawk 800. I managed to sit down and go over the manual of all the features for the synth I dont even have put together yet.. (I'm waiting on a new roll of Kester #44 solder to arrive..).
What I came up with is a rough sketch of the controls I think would benefit the most if it could be extracted out of the synth and placed on a panel so you can tweak sounds on the fly.. like the old school analog synths and the newer retro synths.
This is also similar to the older Roland breakout modules like a PG-300 and other's like it.. you have your synth, then you have this module that plugs into the synth so you can get those buried controls out of there to tweak.
For now, I'll call this thing The Polygon.
The reason to build it instead of using a generic Midi Controller like a Behringer BCR2000 is because the Korg will get glitched and overloaded with midi data.. from what I've understood in Mike's disclaimer/warnings about overuse of Midi data.
So a direct input would probably be better... using the logic and raw programming wizardry that is native to the MPU inside the Korg.
Now I could be all wrong going at it all in this direction.. but I dont hear much about people using generic MIDI controllers on their H800. And using them extensively, like changing three values at one time while getting note and velocity MIDI data crammed thru the MIDI port too.
I just foresee a major traffic jam happening inside.
Below is a link I believe you can open up to see the sketch of controls:
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-Y7E1BM7Gn7E/T_9J2dkFULI/AAAAAAAAACY/iU0I2QwS-Gs/s1253/PolygonV2.jpgHopefully that will load right up in your browser.. it's hosted on google picsaweb.
What I did was try to pack as many controls possible in as much limited space and minimal controls/lights possible.
The first bank of controls, "Modulation", is actually four scenes in one. It's for the two LFO's, Resonance and DCO modulation. The black smudges are suppose to be switches... So where it say's "Mod Select", you press the button and it will scroll thru the four selections, then start over again at the first after the last select.
Same goes for any part that has multiple choices, such as the Mod Source, Waveform.
Now for the Waveform, I was thinking it might be possible to cause the light next to the selected waveform to blink steadily when an inverted waveform is selected... so lets say you press once when a steady triangle WF is on.. it will begin to blink.. meaning it's an inverted triangle.. press again and it goes to the sawtooth WF.. press again and the sawtooth LED will blink, again indicating it is an inverted sawtooth.
If blinking is too complicated a feature to do, then perhaps one extra LED on the side to indicate inverted WF's.
The five encoders are used where needed/applicable for the scene you are currently in... so if PWM isnt being used, that encoder wont have any effect until you change scenes to a Modulation that will actually use it.
The "Delay/EG3 Invert" control is dual purpose, depending on what scene you are in.
The "SLFO FM" bank is to control the two SLFO's.. you can switch between the two and edit on the fly. Waveform selection will work the same way as it does in the "Modulation" scenes.
"VCF-Resonance-Noise" is of course the rest of the controls often tweaked on the fly and pretty much self explanitory. If you see a switch with a LED next to it, like "EG3 Multi Trigger", the control is OFF if the LED is off, and of course ON if it is lit.
The sketch is what I've come up with so far, I know I've left out a lot of features, and I may have gotten some of the features wrong, but I think I've got it pretty darn close to the way the manual explains them.
I think I've counted out:
28 LEDs
12 Momentary Switches
13 Encoders (26 switches for Up/Down param. editing)
So how can I get that much scanning and displaying going on from the Poly 800? Is it possible to do LED matrix using a 2-4 Decoder for Columns and a 3-8 Decoder for the Rows?? And selecting them by using inputs from extra select lines on the Hawk 800 board? This should give me control of 32 LED's.
Then to get all those switches and encoders, I'm afraid I may have to get those from keyboard switches.. but I'd like to be able to make it so I can use the lowest octave of keys still.. while in the Polygon Edit Mode. (and that brings up the idea of a octave "transpose" feature)
Using 5 switch groups of 8 from the keyboard scanning system might do the trick.. that would give me around 40 switches total.. and the sketch shown would require at least 38 of them.
I'm still learing how the decoders work and am still clueless on how to program the 80C85 right now, but I think this project is possible.. if I could workaround not using the keyboard switches, that would be better of course.
But if I did have to use the KB switches, again I'd like to be able to switch from a full useable keyboard to an EDIT mode that would allow use of the breakout control box (The Polygon). Trick is not to hit the keys that are now edit switches when in edit mode.. I have not thought of a way to isolate the KB keys from the Polygon programmer's switches/encoders yet.
While it might be cool for most the edit parameters
I was also thinking all this could be worked so a DB 25 connector/cable could be used to interface the Polygon with the Hawk800 and some of the original Poly800 hardware.. specifically that switch group octal buffer.
The Polygon would need input for the LED's.. probably just 5 select lines from the Hawk 800 and perhaps a 6th or 7th line to Enable a reset on the decoders??? Hopefully the Korg is fast enough to multiplex the LED's and flash thru them fast enough so persistance of vision would make them appear to be steady, unless of course you want one to blink (and I dont know how you'd do that with the described matrix..
Here's a rough sketch on what I'd see needed for the Polygon to get inputs for (minus the 5V/Gnd). I made an error on using 6 switch group lines for the Polygon's switches.. it should be just 5 lines.
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-fDvRIcrQVLo/T_9LMOSNoNI/AAAAAAAAACs/DL09jW-LPLI/s1108/Custom%2520MatrixV1.jpgMike, if you could look that over and let me know what you think.. I'd greatly appreciate any thoughts you have on it or ideas on how to get there. The features you put in our beloved Korgs are just dying to get out in the real world of independent switches and knobs to be tweaked, twisted and contorted to the ends of the earth.
I am problaby missing some logic in the decoders.. like the Enable connections (I assume they need the outputs reset to "0" again by the MPU so it can go read other data on the bus elsewhere?)
I realize this isnt going to be something that can be whipped out tomorrow, next month.. or less than a year.. it's going to take a lot of spare time over a long time.
When I get my H800 installed. I'll be doing the first encoder trial with the regular UP/Down switches on the Korg. When I get that fine tuned using a Dual Flip Flop and Quad Bilateral Switch setup for decoding the encoder and mimicking a switch.. then I'll be able to have something I know can work on the rest of the system's switch scanning.
Whew.. I've been meaning to find time to post this.. but it takes up much time to sit down with pen/paper.. sketch out the controls while reading the manual.. then cludgingly use MS Paint and a cheapo Photo Edit app to get the rough sketch down digitally to share on here (trust me, you dont want photos of my drawings on paper, lol!)
And it's difficult to explain what you're trying to do without drawing a damn picture first..
-Blaine