Paul Schreiber wrote:
> Here is a brief outline of the direction I am going:
>
> 1) It's modular
> 2) Has full MIDI control, but all outputs are analog
> 3) Patch memory
> 4) I can be BIG. I mean ∗REALLY BIG∗ - 256 stages x 64 rows
> 5) The modules are tied to a local LAN than reconfigures the modules, ie
> Plug-&-Play.
> 6) This being MOTM and all, no cheesy pots. We're talking optical encoders,
> baby!
> 7) uP will be in C programming, with "open source code" posted on the
> website.
Okay, I've given this some thought. I would a sequencer that
supported downloadable "personalities." For example, I may
want to read from the ADC and select a stage according to
voltage, i.e. voltage control stage select. I may want to
play with random numbers or markov chains, e.g. set up
probabilities for each stage based on previous stage, etc.
One interesting idea is to be able to download code via midi.
I nibblize my program and pack it in a sysex message and when
sent to the device it gets flashed to ram. Imagine people
posting new "personalities" to the web. Could really drive
sales.
I might still like to have a parallel or serial port to
drive it directly from my PC without going thru midi.
Especially if this is bi-directional. If I could use
the knobs on the device to drive software on my computer
this would be an extremely important new "personality."
It's a sequencer, no it's a programmer, no it's MOAS!
Oh yeah, fast enough to do waveform generation.
So it's a wavestation too.
Another important feature would be to use a uP that is
supported by GCC (the GNU C compiler). Setting up GCC
as a cross-compiler to run on unix or windows is fairly
easy. I'd be willing to help on this. This gives everyone
free tools to program with. GCC tends to work better with
32 bit or higher processors, but I believe some MIPS chips
can be had for as little as ten dollars each. I'm not sure
what <32 bit uP are supported by GCC, I can look into this
if there's interest. Here's a short list of supported
platforms:
http://www.cygnus.com/gnupro/gnupro-platforms.htmlThe MOAS could be the center-piece of the studio with these
features. Think of the possibilities. With 128 stages I
could use my computer to read midi from my keyboard and
thru the parallel port select stages, now I have a midi
to cv converter that supports microtonal tunings and
just intonation.
Just some thoughts,
Thomas