If you want to know more about how to implement this, check with Dreamblaster.

Look guys, I made a thing.

ab0tj wrote:

Look guys, I made a thing.

Looks fantastic ab0tj! 😲

I've been reading the entire thread and it's nice to see everything coming together! Kudos for your work.

I'm drooling... just a little bit. 🤣

Gotta buy as soon as they become available!

nice! 😁

Very Nice 😀

will you offer Kits ?

Excellent. Does it work?

(don't worry, this is the question I ask of everything I build myself too 😀)

matze79 wrote:

will you offer Kits ?

That's the plan... Need to do some testing first, though.

stamasd wrote:

Excellent. Does it work?

I actually don't know yet 😁 I finished soldering it together last night, need to program the micro and test today.

Good news, everyone!

It works! Now comes the fun part... Testing it with every game I can think of.

Wow! I'm after one!:)

ab0tj wrote:

Good news, everyone!

It works! Now comes the fun part... Testing it with every game I can think of.

Awesome job!

One small error that I will need to fix before ordering more boards though, it seems that the DE9 footprint I used is reversed for some reason, so the cable will need to be built with a mirror image of it's pinout.

OK guys, I have one board left. I'll send it to someone, free of charge (or for just shipping if you're not in the US), that can agree to:
1) Order parts and solder them in
2) Test the hell out of it
3) Contribute to debugging/fixes if problems do arise.

Any takers?

ab0tj wrote:

Any takers?

Oh, hell yeah, I'd be on board... but if I'm being honest I don't think I'd have the time to do justice to the kind of testing you're looking for, as much as I'd really really like to get my hands on it. Damn kids and adult obligations..

RJDog wrote:

Oh, hell yeah, I'd be on board... but if I'm being honest I don't think I'd have the time to do justice to the kind of testing you're looking for, as much as I'd really really like to get my hands on it. Damn kids and adult obligations..

Understood. It's those obligations that have made this project take as long as it has. And to be clear, I'm not asking for someone to devote their life to this- Just play games with it, note any problems, and ideally have some know-how to possibly make some contributions to the project. What I don't want is for it to just end up in someone's "to-do" pile with other unfinished projects.

I'd love to help too, but I won't be able to get a break from work until around mid-february. Also, I fear I would only be able to contribute to the software/code side of things, since my knowledge of electronics is (very) limited.

Hopefully a Vogoner with enough time/skills will be able to take on this task, but in any case I'm 100% behind this project 😀

ab0tj wrote:

Just play games with it, note any problems, and ideally have some know-how to possibly make some contributions to the project. What I don't want is for it to just end up in someone's "to-do" pile with other unfinished projects.

It'd be my pleasure, and more than willing/able to contribute technically to the project. If you can't "sell" it to someone who can dedicate more time than I might be able to, hit me up.

ab0tj, the USER header... looks like it's connected to the second UART of the Atmega1284, where the actual external MIDI port is connected to the first UART (as expected). Are the signals on the second UART of the MC duplicated to/from the host (i.e. are the signals sent and received on the second UART identical as on the first) or would this require some customization of the firmware loaded onto the Atmega?

Right now the firmware does nothing with the second UART. It wouldn't take much to add an option to the config utility that switches the midi output to the second UART (or both).

I'm not sure if you answered this question before, but do you consider this project open-source, or more proprietary than that (i.e. you'd like to tightly control the firmware, etc.)?