Next-gen and mini Axoloti hardware discussion

#368

Sorry Urklang, looks like we just crossposted, check-out my other post just before yours.

Not saying your board is bogus, your board is fantastic and I cannot wait for the FPAA stuff, but that image right there, the Tsunami, is exactly what I am getting at regards how Axoloti should be shipped.

Lets's for simplicity sake imagine that the Tsunami was actually your new board. What's to stop you shipping it with two audio jacks on the end of a cable that simply plugs into it via a header on the board?

What?

See what I'm getting at? You can do that 'out-of-the-box-ready' thing without actually soldering the bloody things to the core board. So I do agree that it is wise to be ready out of the box for most people. I just think there are better, more practical ways to do it for a product such as this.

The difference between your board and the Tsunami, is that the Tsunami, if supplied with break-out style panel-mount audio jacks, is not "preset" as both yours and Johannes boards are.

That Tsunami board is the way to do it, you simply need to go one better and supply the audio jacks on the end of a cable to give your customers that out-of-the-box convenience. It's almost as if neither of you can think out of the box in that regard.

Convenience, does not mean the convenience needs to be fitted to the main core board, you very clever, but slightly crazy person :wink:

#369

Ha ha ha, I'm still not buying your argument that there is a real distinction here. The only logical difference between the IO on what you're showing with Tsunami and what I'm doing is that on my board there are footprints available for actually attaching audio jacks to the board if you want them. Many people want this. They can be ignored if you order my board without populated audio jacks as I mention above. Both boards have audio running out to standard test points. In both cases, you're free to attach whatever jack you like. I don't see any reason to explicitly remove the option to attach jacks to board with actual footprints, to force every user to deal with the jack-cable dongle you describe. We're splitting hairs here. I think we're really in agreement if you boil it down: give users maximum flexibility and power, but remain focused enough to serve the vast majority of users out of the box.

#370

It's a thing made for audio, so it should come with audio jacks. Stop trying to force your opinion on other people and give the guy some time to actually develop the thing as he thinks fit.

#371

Sort of on the same wavelength, but I've always seen the commercial potential in Axoloti as a platform, and unfortunately I could use neither your or Johannes boards 'as they come' in commercial products.

Your board is better than Johannes' in that regard (because population is massively reduced), but I still wish there was no population of audio jacks or even placeholders for them on the board.

I even wish the Tsunami didn't have that USB power port, because there is no way on earth I'd supply any instrument that is not powered through a purpose-designed barrel jack. I'm well aware that a lot of manufacturers accept micro USB to be a physically worthy power-supply receptacle, but I'm not one of them and never will be. I honestly wouldn't dare put such a crappy power connection on any commercial instrument I might produce. USB is for data as far as I'm concerned, not power.

So I'm aware of how much you've put into keeping it unpopulated, but I'd still have to roll my own if I ever got into commercial production. To be honest, after playing with the original board and being frustrated with pretty much every choice of population on it, I knew that either it will just remain a hobby, or I am going to have to pay someone to decipher the schematic and roll a board to my own physical design, something I can reuse in every relevant product, and never needs to be redesigned.

Really frustrates me, so much so that I actually started designing rig that could help me depopulate the original board. The only reason I gave-up on it is for the same reason your board frustrates me just a little, that being, depopulating the board makes the board look like a cut'n'shove (botch job) and crazy as it might sound to some, it bothers me that someone would open-up a product of mine and find something that would look like a repurposed board.

I've got big plans, and the Axoloti part of it matters a lot, because once I get my head fully around it, and am in a position to have others freelance for me, there really is nothing to hold me back, or to stop me expanding at quite a rate. I know exactly what people want, have got it right year after year after year, am expert at marketing, and I'm not too shabby with Blender. So my company will certainly do well. I won't allow parts into a commercial product, that has been repurposed or even looks as if it has. I would be much better off rolling my own board from the very start than doing stuff like that.

Had Axoloti been completely unpopulated, that would not be necessary, so that's why any population of the board bothers me when such things as headers exist.

#372

Some of us have plans far greater than making 16-step bleep sequences, sir. Just thought I'd point that out in case you live in a fantasy-world where commercial developers do not exist, or should not be allowed to voice an opinion based on their preferences.

Cheers!

#373

I would like to jump in and give my thoughts, I have an Axo, and a Tsunami, On my Axo, I de-soldered the audio jacks, de-soldered the USB host, I removed the Midi portion as a breakout, everything is extended out with wired links, works fine, no issues, with the tsunami, no de-soldering required, have extended out with 8 mono outputs, and the Midi input.

With the next gen Axo, I would de-solder the Audio jacks, but I would not de-solder the USB-C, because it is small, it would be very easy to just make a USB-C to USB-A extension to link out.

I strongly believe the right decision has been made to solder in the USB ports, I don't think the Audio jacks are necessary, but with this being the only thing questionable, its almost insignificant, especially if it is a benefit to others straight out of the box.

Five minutes of de-soldering isn't going to bother me any.
:grin:

#374

Yeah but that's because Ozzies are good at soldering :grin:

#376

...personally,I don't like soldering and even less desoldering,
since I got the hands of a potato farmer.
desoldering a micro-usb-port makes me so scared
to destroy the board that I will probably never try.

conclusion: I would be most happy about a board where all
that pre-populated IO is doubled as soldering-points,
so I can just enjoy that great out-of-the-box-feeling,
and also do some super relaxed DIY-ing here and there.

cheers
R

#377

Very agree about a board where all
that pre-populated IO is doubled as soldering-points.

(I would rather a board with "blank" IO, but USB-C does'nt take too much space.)

#379

All ideas have a case. And also it's disadvantages..
a "proper" unpopulated board appeals more to hackers / DIYers, engineers, etc (a minority). compared with something that looks like a finished product that will appeal more to people like Musicians, sound enthusiasts / collectors etc (way more broad audience).
I think Axoloti has an "ok" balance of features that at least allows anyone to use it without having to solder anything (Although most "normal" people are still intimidated by the fact that Axoloti it's a bare pcb.) .
I have taught Axoloti and sold a couple of dozen of units. If soldering / assembling was a requirement, that wouldn't have been the case..
Maybe another good option could be to offer the super bare unpopulated board and also one Axoloti with an enclosure and interface. so that it will appeal to more potential users.. Of course this isn't either a trivial thing to do but I definitely would allocate resources for that as I know that the community would benefit enormously from a unified basic physical interface. (and that brings more sales when more stellar / self contained patches get shared / showcased )

I'm actually one of the users that always rips off the midi part and the integrated jacks.. But I have clear what I would do if it was my decision (and I wanted to do way more $$)..

#380

And thank god for that :slight_smile: I hate soldering, I have no interest in it. I have a whole bunch of those displays lying around, that I never got implemented cause I am scared of breaking something.

I want to focus on the patching side and spend my time there, to make all kinds of cool instruments.

#381

Once you connect a display to Axoloti, it becames a "must".. Just because of the fact that you can have an sdcard full of patches and you can scroll between them and "see" what are you loading Makes it totally worth the effort..
Maybe you could try breadboarding it but still you must solder the header pins (not difficult)

#382

First of all, servandisco, thanks for being one who replies with a pleasant attitude :slightly_smiling_face:

I agree with your post, but as usual, I think other people here do their very best to take my posts out of context, something to cause a friendly joust over. Fact is, I do not expect Urklang to change his current board to something that would appeal to a commercial developer. I said right from the first time he ever mentioned it (in the FPGA thread if I recall), that I'm all for this, and I hope that he releases a non-populated version as well as the standard version if the standard version happens to be populated.

Nothing has changed.

In addition, it's amusing how, despite me mentioning headers and ribbon cables, people are talking about soldering and desoldering. By headers, I mean like those used for the GPIO pins on a Raspberry PI. The beauty of those is that during development, you can attach individual breadboard wires to them. Then, when you've decided what you want, you can always tidy it up by connecting a ribbon cable to it instead (which is a commercially viable and tidy connection). Think of the connection used to connect IDE hard drives to a motherboard, it's just a ribbon cable being plugged into those same pins as used on the Raspberry Pi.

There is no need to solder or desolder anything on an unpopulated board that has these pins fitted, ready to accept whatever wire or ribbon cable you like. That's why my argument is that surely a proper unpopulated development board supplied with header pins that can be plugged into, is a solution that works for all. If I had done what Urklang has done, I'd simply make the board unpopulated and offer, on the same website, the option to add a power socket with cable, audio socket with cable, and MIDI DIN socket with cable, etc.

You simply add these options to your cart at your preference when you buy the unpopulated board, so that when you receive it, you simply plug the things into the unpopulated board, no soldering or desoldering required, which means you're left with an Axoloti setup that is custom-made for you :star_struck:

That's the way I would have done it anyway. This whole thing about soldering and desoldering simply doesn't come into the picture. There is no need to be concerned about that, because all you have to do is plug a cable into the header pins of the board. That's why I said that anyone incapable of plugging-in a cable, probably should not be playing around with an Axoloti anyway.

#383

What are you on about? There is no sinister conspiracy to isolate one individual and castigate them. It's a fan forum for people who like to tinker with audio.

#385

This also opens up the ability for other manufacturers to make products based on your board. The Tesseract Nutella is a modules that uses a factory made Tsunami as it's guts, just supplying a interface that won't blow up the I/O with signal levels too big and brings all controls and jacks to a user friendly front panel.

Sell the board with no jacks at all. Don't put stuff on there that people will sometimes have to remove.

#386

This is not really what I would consider unpopulated, if the headers are there, this is already a choice you can't make yourself. What if you want them on the other side of the board, what if you want female instead of male etc. Desoldering headers is one of the most horrible things around you can easly fuck up a board like this.
So truly unpopulated = solder them yourself = people don't like soldering.

Furthermore working with ribbon cables and headers even if everything is presoldered is still clumsy for non nerds,
if all you wanna do is hook up a midi controller and start rocking some patches.

So while I understand your preference for no conncector components on the board (It would be even my own preference propably) it would exclude the needs of a certain amount of people.

In that regard I think @Urklang did a great choice, because he reduced the conncector parts to minimum amount and a small footprint and makes available everything as test points. He even gives you the option to order with the parts unsoldered. I couldn't think of any better compromise.

If you really wanna go professionally into production why don't you design your own board anyway?

#387

I think that a person who doesn't like soldering is not the target for this product. They will buy boxes that are made that incorporate this module in them. Of course this is the makers choice. If I was the maker of this module, I would offer it in a connectionless version, and sell "shield" like modules that would provide the common connector types people would ask for. The solder haters would have to pay a little more of course.

#388

I agree with that 100%, and I'll have to check-out a Tesseract Nutella. I did wonder whether the Tsunami ever got used in commercial products, so cool to hear that it has.

So yes, absolutely yes, I totally agree that it opens up the board to commercial developers. This is what I tried telling Johannes some time back, that more opportunities are there if your board is also made attractive to commercial developers who are looking to release DSP-based products.

It's especially crazy when you consider that Axoloti must be the most accessible DSP solution out there, and will be even more so when we get higher-level objects that the newcomer and layman can use. The potential for popularity of the Axoloti system would be tremendous if designed with commercial users in mind, along with simplicity for the layman, and a successful method of publicity.

True, but you have to admit that there is no better format than header pins that can accept breadboard wires while you tinker, and, can then be switched for a ribbon cable when you want something more permanent and elegant. The icing on the cake of course, is that a commercial developer would likely attach to the board using such a fitment anyway - ribbon onto header pins. Take a look inside any synth from Korg, Roland, Yamaha etc, they often use this connection type to connect drives to boards, keybeds to boards, and even boards to boards. I suppose, understandably, it has become industry standard practice because it is such a versatile, solid and dependable format of connection. I can say without any doubt, that it most certainly will be used inside my own products if they ever see the light of day.

It sounds like you might have missed a post of mine due to the rate at which this thread progresses. But yes, I already have realised I might need to roll my own board, but it would have been nice not to have to do that.

I'm a big fan of this idea, it's a very elegant solution, because those who don't want the shield and need complete freedom of placement, simply do not attach the shield and are left by default with the ideal commercially viable Axoloti board with header pins!

#389

Seriously, Urklang, that suggestion from Ersatz is perfect in every possible way. It provides both the ideal commercial design, the ideal development design, and the ideal out-of-the-box and ready-to-go design.

I'm very critical, and I literally cannot fault it :sunglasses:

#390

... plus, it means that us commercially-minded folks won't have to send our boards in bulk off to Australia for Gav' to desolder :grin: