thinking of buying a midi-fighter some questions though

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thinking of buying a midi-fighter some questions though
Posted on: 09.02.2010 by Erlond Everaert
i am looking at a midi fighter and have some questions about the additional inputs.

With the 4 analog inputs you can add buttons knobs faders and switches but for the 4 digital inputs what options do i have there.

is it possible to connect a device to turn the digital input to a analog input or many inputs.

I was also reading that you could run a serial device to split up the digital inputs what is this and can anyone explain how it works.

Sorry about the dis-jointed post but i am having a lot of trouble finding out information about the insides of the midi fighter.
Rebecka Ockert
13.02.2010
Originally Posted by Fatlimey
Boy, was I the wrong person to answer this question.

Yes, POTs and Sliders are analog inputs. You can have four of them, hook them up as demonstrated in the "Cuban MIDI Crisis" article and they will work without programming.
But you may be the best person to answer some of my future questions... I did not realize all you spoke of was possible with the MIDI Fighter (expandability through hackage .

Before I ask you any questions, though, I'd like to do as much research as possible on my own as not to waste your time, therefore can you please point me to the documentation on the source code and what is possible with the included I/O on the board? Also, I heard there is a scale drawing of the top panel I can download somewhere??? I'd definitely be taking a whack at a custom case for this thing if I were to use it as part of my whole controller I plan to build.

Thanks!!!
Erlond Everaert
09.02.2010		i am looking at a midi fighter and have some questions about the additional inputs.

With the 4 analog inputs you can add buttons knobs faders and switches but for the 4 digital inputs what options do i have there.

is it possible to connect a device to turn the digital input to a analog input or many inputs.

I was also reading that you could run a serial device to split up the digital inputs what is this and can anyone explain how it works.

Sorry about the dis-jointed post but i am having a lot of trouble finding out information about the insides of the midi fighter.
Adolf Hit
13.02.2010		Just look at the stickes in the MF community , that should link to everything you need
Rebecka Ockert
13.02.2010
Originally Posted by Fatlimey
Boy, was I the wrong person to answer this question.

Yes, POTs and Sliders are analog inputs. You can have four of them, hook them up as demonstrated in the "Cuban MIDI Crisis" article and they will work without programming.
But you may be the best person to answer some of my future questions... I did not realize all you spoke of was possible with the MIDI Fighter (expandability through hackage .

Before I ask you any questions, though, I'd like to do as much research as possible on my own as not to waste your time, therefore can you please point me to the documentation on the source code and what is possible with the included I/O on the board? Also, I heard there is a scale drawing of the top panel I can download somewhere??? I'd definitely be taking a whack at a custom case for this thing if I were to use it as part of my whole controller I plan to build.

Thanks!!!
Erlond Everaert
10.02.2010		na you were the right person to answer it. Thanks heaps for your help and at least ill have some research to do before uni starts again.

Thanks for your help guys i just purchased one then with extra buttons and ordered some extra parts from an electronics store.

Bring on the research and modding.
Adolf Hit
10.02.2010		The firmware is much much easier to update than a VCI.

Without changing the firmware you can add up to four buttons, and four pots/faders.
robert chanda
10.02.2010		Boy, was I the wrong person to answer this question.

Yes, POTs and Sliders are analog inputs. You can have four of them, hook them up as demonstrated in the "Cuban MIDI Crisis" article and they will work without programming.
Erlond Everaert
10.02.2010		so that being said out of the box i can attach 4 extra buttons and they will work the same as the existing buttons.

Looking at other posts with a firmware update i can also attach 4 analogue inputs.

Is a pitch fader or pot considered a analogue input.

How hard will it be to update the firmware i did it on my vestax but i am believeing might be a little bit harder.

I am a little tech savvy but have no idea what you are talking about with the 3 options with modifying the source to add buttons but will look at google and try and get my head around it.
robert chanda
10.02.2010		A digital input is for anything with an on and an off state - push buttons, toggle switches, momentary buttons. Connect them up and it'll work "out of the box" without any programming.

If you are able to do some programming and want to get into hacking the source code, the four digital pins can be used in several interesting ways:

  1. Three pins can be used to bit-bang a parallel-in-serial-out chip (CLOCK, DATA and LATCH). This way you can latch the state of as many buttons as you like and shift them in as a serial stream. This way you can read banks of even a hundred buttons very efficiently.
  2. Three of the pins can be set up as an SPI bus (CLOCK, MISO and MOSI) with the fourth pin selecting between two banks of something. SPI communications allows two-way communication between many kinds of devices all sitting on the same bus. With the single free pin you can select between two devices sharing the same bus. One could be, say, an Arduino set up to run an LCD screen and the other could be an SPI touch screen controller.
  3. You can use the digital inputs to read two rotary encoders. A quadrature Encoder outputs two bits, and tracking the two bits turning on and off will tell you which direction the encoder is being spun, tracking the frequency of changes tells you how fast. Be sure to poll them fast so as not to miss a rising or falling edge, unless you want to set up an interrupt on another pin.


You read the devices, produce MIDI events in the Midifighter and send them over USB using the software we have provided. Those are your options.
Erlond Everaert
09.02.2010		what do digital inputs include. I want to add some line faders can i use the digital inputs for buttons or pretty much what can i use the digital inputs for
robert chanda
09.02.2010		The circuits, top plates, source code and everything needed to build your own Midifighter are available on the Sourceforge site:

http://sourceforge.org/project/midifighter

We have put together a tutorials on how to extend your Midifighter, we're putting together some products ideas to extend the usefulness of the device. More than that I really don;t know how to help you further.

At some point you're going to have to learn how to build and program your own extension devices. Get a breadboard, some wire and a few components and try some experiements. Good starting points for extending a few pins into reading banks of switches or POTs are here:

http://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/ShiftIn
http://www.arduino.cc/playground/Learning/4051
http://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/ShiftOut

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