Reply to Midibox Build! Questions! Problems!

Hi everyone,

I've decided to build myself a midibox with a mixer like design for use with my vinyl control setup. I've gotten most of the passive components (the pots and buttons). I'm buying the midibox modules from Fa5ky on this community already assembled and he assures me that they work. So thats that out of the way.

However, I find the body of midibox information spread around ucapps.de and other sites extremely confusing and really not at all helpful to a newbie....so i come to DJTT for some help! Why DJTT and not the midibox community s? well i'm already a member of these community s and I know people help each other out around here and a few of you have also built midiboxes...

SO my questions are:
1. Is an LCD really necessary? like really..? I know it says its recommended if its your first midibox..but its one of the more pricy components...
2. This may be a dumb question but...If all the unused inputs have to be soldered to ground, where in turn is the ground soldered to? The casing? An external grounding cable?
3. If i do decide to include an LCD, menu buttons are required right? How does the midibox know which buttons i connect are menu buttons without prior configuration? Do i just connect these to the DIN module?
4. Once everything is connected and built, how do i get the firmware or whatever onto the Midibox?
5. How does LED mapping work? Is it just a trial and error?

If someone could give me an overview of what happens AFTER the midibox is all connected and built, that would be great. Cause right now i'm confused as hell about that...

Sorry if the answers to these are obvious...

here's the design if anyones interested: