Ableton Forum

Fingers crossed forunder $100.

250

there is no way it will be less than 100.

why you being so cheap?

ToneDeft, do you have an idea how large the 40h would be using the
larger logic kit buttons?

I would love to be able to add tri color functionality, that way I could
color code different types of events. But being a total newb at dyi
electronics, I will be lucky if I can put together a regular 40h.
I hope when you get it working you can release some detailed docs
so we might try it.

Man this is cool. Still confused about what goes into these types of projects. No one has ever stated step by step what one needs to do to build a controller. I would have NO idea what I would be getting myself into.

They type of description that would be very helpful would look like this:

Step 1: Make a drawing of what you want so you can make a list of the parts you will need and the size it will be. This will give you an Idea of the enclosure specs.

Step 2: Buy the kit. Buy other parts (LEDs and encoders [www.LEDsAndEncoders.com]. Buy a soldering gun and X type of solder.

Step 3: Practice applying solder to 2 pieces of wire (or something like that. Most "novices" don't wield a soldering gun too often)

**** Here's the part that is so very, very, VERY confusing *****

Step 4: Solder LEDs to PCBs? HOW? HOW MANY WIRES? HOW SMLL ARE WE TALKING? WHAT CAN BE CUSTOMIZED? RATED ON HOW ADVANCED THIS STEP IS, ONE BEING EASY AS TYING A SHOE, 10 BEING SLITTING ATOMS...

Step 5: Etc...

Step 6: Etc...

Step 7: Etc...

------------

Is there any programming or firmware installation involved? Does it take a PC with a serial port to do this? A special machine?

If and when I ever get the info I can't glean from the forums related to this stuff (it is all way too vague and leet for the likes of me), I will be making a step by step blog of how to do what I did to make it work... because no one has for some reason.


Can anyone help?

Now what I would really love to build is a tri color 40h with an XY touch pad
on it. Or maybe some ribbon controller. Do you think there would be
enough power left over on the USB bus to power any thing extra?

apalomba wrote:ToneDeft, do you have an idea how large the 40h would be using the
larger logic kit buttons?

I bought the sparkfun pads before they announced the whole kit. In the pic I put in the first page:

It looks like the 40h pads are 3/4 the size of the sparkfun pads. The 16x16 grid of sparkfun pads measures 7 7/8", call it 8", so a finished kit with those would be ~10" square.

I would love to be able to add tri color functionality, that way I could
color code different types of events. But being a total newb at dyi
electronics, I will be lucky if I can put together a regular 40h.
I hope when you get it working you can release some detailed docs
so we might try it.

I plan on giving the plans to the monomes, if/when I work this out. I don't need the hassle for a few bucks. I know what to do in MAX/MSP to get an LED to dim in and out, I just can't try it yet!! Once I know the hardware can handle that it's a matter of dimming 3 LEDs at once, IOW just do the same thing two more times. Anyway, more on that as it develops.

kabuki wrote:No one has ever stated step by step what one needs to do to build a controller. I would have NO idea what I would be getting myself into.

I think it's safe to say that this will be as easy of a DIY kit as there is. If you get really hosed, send it to me, I can fix/build it if you pay the postage but I don't want to get into a position where I'm building 50 of these things, but I can help a few people. I completely encourage people to try it themselves. It feels GREAT to use something you built and this is a great way to learn.

I get the sense that the monomes have spent the last 2-3 weeks debugging the kit and making up DETAILED construction tips, they know how you feel Kabuki, monome.org is a classsy group of guys, IMO.

Enclosure specs - Monome posted a .pdf of the grid that goes over the buttons:
http://wiki.monome.org/Attachment/monome40h_plate.pdf
You can take that to any machine or plastics shop (I plan on using http://www.tapplastics.com/ because there's a store near me.) As for the case, that's up to you, the machine/plastics shop might be able to help you with that too.

Solder - Any kind of solder will do, stay away from ROHS aka 'lead free' solder, check wikipedia for what RoHS means. This is a new solder with no lead that melts at a higher temp and is like warm peanut butter to work with. You will have no problem finding other solders, just walk into Radio Shack and say "I want to buy some solder and not the lead free type" (that's lead as in Pb, not lead as in "lead me to the party". Soldering irons are $10-$20. Again, just go into Radio Shack, say you have 1 project to do and you need a soldering iron.

This is a good picture of the size of holes you'll be dealing with

That's a standard hole spacing and size, it is not small.

How many wires will you have to solder? My guess... less than 50 wire, but remember, there are 64 LEDs, so that's 128 solders. Those are simple as long as you remember to not put them in backwards (order extra LEDS!!) and you're patient to put them in straight up and down.
<-- 40h w/the top off


Customising... that all depends on what you want to do, kind of an open ended question. The shit I'm talking about with tri-color and stuff, you have to know electronics design and programming. If you just want to use red LEDs instead of green, that's dead simple, just order a different color.

I'm sure the monomes will release all the details on what you need to buy and some tips on where to get it.

Is there any programming or firmware installation involved? Does it take a PC with a serial port to do this? A special machine?

Nope, you will get a programmed part in the kit. If you want to program your own you need to track down a C compiler/editor, the programming software, the libraries for the Atmega part software, the programming hardware... It's nothing you'll need to worry about.

[

There's probably very little current left over to draw from BUT the parts you mention are passive and require very little current (5-25mA???) so it's very doable. I've put up some links showing how people have added a knob or a tilt sensor.


Any other questions? Damn... I'm excited to start hacking on this thing and all I can do is talk about it, idle hands...

Trust that the monomes know that their audience are mostly electronic illiterate, they will do their best to guide you through the process.


How to solder
So you have
the PCB (the printed circuit board)
the wire
the solder

Put the wire against the PCB where you want it to stick
put the soldering iron at the joint where they touch so you're dumping heat into the wire and the PCB.
put the solder against that joint, but NOT touching the iron.
the key is to let the heat in the wire and the PCB melt the solder, this is usually 3-10 seconds, larger pieces of metal take more time because it takes longer for them to heat up.
After every few solders wipe the tip of the iron off by rubbing it on a damp sponge, any crap that builds up on the tip acts to slow down the heat transfer from the iron to the metal.
- oh, and the first thing you do when you get an iron is to get it hot and hold some solder to the tip to coat the tip in solder, this is called 'tinning the tip' and makes the iron last longer.

There's a lot of LEDs, that will take the longest to solder, maybe an hour if you stick with it. The other parts... maybe another hour only because you'll be looking at the drawings and the parts and double checking yourself. I'd say that the n00b could build one in 3 hours.


Anyway... hth, hang tight and remember that a lot of this is speculation on my part.

Tone Deft wrote: Any other questions?

Since you asked...

thanks for all of the help thus far...you may be the only reason i havent said "aww...too bad i don't know a thing about doldering or any of this"

woud the wires and all of that allow for me to arrange the buttons in a fashion different from the diagram? not dramatically different..i want groups of 16 or something with more space in between certain groups so that i can label buttons.

it would, for instance, be 4 4x4 squares with the normal spacing within them, but perhaps double the space between the 4 squares. this is a terrible explanation. dag.

Surreal wrote:

Tone Deft wrote: Any other questions?

Since you asked...

thanks for all of the help thus far...you may be the only reason i havent said "aww...too bad i don't know a thing about doldering or any of this"

woud the wires and all of that allow for me to arrange the buttons in a fashion different from the diagram? not dramatically different..i want groups of 16 or something with more space in between certain groups so that i can label buttons.

it would, for instance, be 4 4x4 squares with the normal spacing within them, but perhaps double the space between the 4 squares. this is a terrible explanation. dag.

I get what you're saying. That's not how you'd achieve that. You would make those kinds of changes in the software. Check out the video I linked to earlier
http://vjkungfu.tv/archive/av-sequencin ... mx-monome/
Halfway through he shows how buttons are grouped.

Basically the 40h is just a button and LED box, laid out so they're easy to read and write data to. ALL the blinkies and control issues are done in software. Watch a bunch of those videos and you'll see. I didn't pick up on it until I saw some videos with different software apps running. All the software is free.

Tone, you rule. THANKS.

I do graphics (Photoshop, Illustrator) for a living. If you want any help doing a silk screen template for the faceplate, etc, let me know.


Thanks again.

Right on, thanks! The casing is where I have no clue I think I know some people I can ask though.


I wanted to add re: the button layout, what each button does and how the LEDs react is 100% up to the software on the computer. The 40h has nothing to do with midi, it's just an interface.

This is kind of how it works (I can't say for sure because I haven't had a chance to code it yet.)
Read - read two bytes from the 40h
Write - write two bytes from the 40h

So you'd do something like this:
Write 1 <- turn on LED#1
Read (and you read the number 12) = button #12 was just pushed
and so on.

Then in MAX/MSP, bidule, Pd etc whatever you're comfortable with, you can make software that sends data to the 40h and scans the input from the 40h for button presses.

Watch a bunch of videos, you'll see that it's a blank slate.


...impatiently awaiting the post from tehn saying "Come and get 'em!!"
refresh, refresh, refresh...

Having not ever used Max, is it difficult to set up. I figure I would be setting up for a basic layout and doing all the assignments in Ableton.

Are there templated files for the Monome available?

Is sthere a free version of Max?

Setting up the 40h with XP
http://wiki.monome.org/view/Tutorial40hAndAbletonLiveXp

Setting it up on a Mac
http://wiki.monome.org/view/Tutorial40h ... tonLiveOsX

kabuki wrote:Having not ever used Max, is it difficult to set up. I figure I would be setting up for a basic layout and doing all the assignments in Ableton.

Are there templated files for the Monome available?

Is sthere a free version of Max?

MAX is pretty deep, I would put it at the same skill level as learning C coding. I'm just learning Max now but I'm used to learning new coding languages. I wouldn't recommend it to everyone. There are other options like Bidule, Pd, Reaktor and others that are simpler to use.

Basically (I think) the 40h shows up as a USB device that you read and write 2 bytes at a time to. Ableton doesn't have the resources to send bits and bytes to ports, just midi and audio. That might change with Live 7.

People have made interfaces for Ableton, check the middle of the page here:
http://wiki.monome.org/view/WeShareInformation-2

# ableton live sequencer: app (max/msp) lstep8
# ableton live midi communication: app (chuck) monoableme
# ableton live midi rev 2: app (chuck) monogrid

(it looks like the first one is in max/msp, the other two were written in something named 'chuck'.)
There are also videos showing these applications in use.

To use an application made in MAX you download the FREE Max runtime environment. and run the application in that. You can get all the software you need for free to use the 40h. If you want to develop applications you need to buy one of the apps I mentioned.

Again, I say all this before ever touching a monome bit of gear but I've spent too much time on their site (which is odd to get around in.)

Tone Deft wrote:Setting up the 40h with XP
http://wiki.monome.org/view/Tutorial40hAndAbletonLiveXp

Setting it up on a Mac
http://wiki.monome.org/view/Tutorial40h ... tonLiveOsX

kabuki wrote:Having not ever used Max, is it difficult to set up. I figure I would be setting up for a basic layout and doing all the assignments in Ableton.

Are there templated files for the Monome available?

Is sthere a free version of Max?

MAX is pretty deep, I would put it at the same skill level as learning C coding. I'm just learning Max now but I'm used to learning new coding languages. I wouldn't recommend it to everyone. There are other options like Bidule, Pd, Reaktor and others that are simpler to use.

Basically (I think) the 40h shows up as a USB device that you read and write 2 bytes at a time to. Ableton doesn't have the resources to send bits and bytes to ports, just midi and audio. That might change with Live 7.

People have made interfaces for Ableton, check the middle of the page here:
http://wiki.monome.org/view/WeShareInformation-2

# ableton live sequencer: app (max/msp) lstep8
# ableton live midi communication: app (chuck) monoableme
# ableton live midi rev 2: app (chuck) monogrid

(it looks like the first one is in max/msp, the other two were written in something named 'chuck'.)
There are also videos showing these applications in use.

To use an application made in MAX you download the FREE Max runtime environment. and run the application in that. You can get all the software you need for free to use the 40h. If you want to develop applications you need to buy one of the apps I mentioned.

Again, I say all this before ever touching a monome bit of gear but I've spent too much time on their site (which is odd to get around in.)

ouch.

nah, it'll be easy to setup

tutorial - 40h and ableton live (xp)

this requires ableton live version 6. version 5 doesn’t report clip status via midi.

a few simple steps to get ableton talking to the 40h:

1. install midi-yoke (reboot when finished!)

http://www.midiox.com/zip/MidiYokeSetup.msi

2. run _40h_serial.mxb (if you don’t have these yet, get them here:)

app (max/msp) base patches

3. run _40h_midi.mxb

down towards the bottom, select midi output port to:

MIDI Yoke NT: 1

and the midi input to:

MIDI Yoke NT: 2

4. open ableton live. get in the midi preferences.

turn ON (track, sync, and remote):

Input: MIDI Yoke NT: 1
Output: MIDI Toke NT: 2

leave the rest off (unless you know what you’re doing.)

5. you’re done. switch on midi-learn, assign keys to tracks, the stop buttons, etc. led light will follow tracks, etc.

pretty nice.

4 steps but I think they skipped the step on downloading the free max/msp runtime environment.

Looks like you midi learn from the monome into Live, that max program turns midi into 40h talk and back.