WIP (HERON) Axoloti Addon Board Project

#17

The thing that matters to me is the 16 buttons for the sequencer, the rest is minor details.

#18

After the deep passsion i have seen here for 16 buttons i have been emotionally moved to add anouther button! jks it was actully always meant to have 16 i just forgot to add anouther button after i decided it needed a modifier button so crisis averted.

Thanks everyone for the feedback made me reconsider some things first i'd just like to say that this is basiclly the first pass on ui and a lot of the awkwardness is purely a result of trying to fit it all around the cutouts and header for axoloti i think it can be definitely improved but it's hard to move the pots out of the way or add a second row without creating a lot of dead space at the top of the device there's already more than i would like.

As far as the 5th pot it is there entirely to act as a control and can be reassigned by the user if they really want as i don't see a reason to prevent someone from doing so. Your assumption that it was a 5th pot does however make it clear that putting it some close to main values is confusing so i will be moving it to a more sperate location and properly diffrentalting it with a diffrent knob type.

The was orginally planning on two joyticks but ran out of pins what i think might to on the on a public version an assuming there there remain space after iterating on the layout is have a postion for the joytick on both wired to the same pin allowing people to pick which side will have the stick.

I've considered this approach but i'd much rather have the pins accessible directly and have a object that just truns it into a midi keyboard than implementing all the LED's and gate outputs the onyl reason i really see to do it is if runn the io is going ot be a massive resource hog which i don't think it will be so the jury out till after the first prototype on that.

Yeah software is going to be a big part of this. The project is mainly about creatring a platform for some more plug and play axoloti patches and building on some really good existing community work. I'm working on this with a friend who's studying electrical engineering currently and were hoping get things like a navigatable menu/parameter slection going and some polished patches for sequencing. Although i want to very clear this is probs going to be decently far out on the timeline.

Based on my reading ofsome old forum posts that pin should be 5v tolerent but now that you've brought it up i am unsure. I've gone with 5v as it lets me do the gate outputs easily and the led's are 5v since it's already on the board i figured i'd take advantage of it.

I had a discussion today with my co designer about how we were going to implement various patches and encoders do probably make more sense would like to hear other peoples feeling on pots vs encoders

The extra pots you added sit right on top of the axoloti unfortunately so adding more pots will substaully increase the size of thing unless people are okay with having them orphened in strage places right now it's around 265mmX120mm which is feeling kind of big to me.

Considered doing RGB bbut honestly could think if why you'd need more than 3 colours on those buttons.

CV would be cool but requires a decent amount of extra components and given my realtive newness to electronics have penciled that away for a future revison/at the very least after i have a working prototype of the current featre setwith most of it working.

I envision it as a modifier key akin to shift where you can hold it down while pressing another button or knob to get a diffrent function and hitting it with your pinky felt like a natral place for it mabe making the button a diffrent shape would better differentiate it's function and help it sit better visually.

After going through all the comments here a rough idea of what i'm going to be looking at as far as changes

  • 16 steps is a lock YAY!
  • encoders instead of pots
    • still going to keep it as 4 main parameters but think it might be a good idea to have 4 buttons and leds as a bank select giving 16 virtual encoders thus matching the length of the step sequencer and giving a lot of flexability for non sequencer use.
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  • + - buttons to move octaves/page between pages of step sequences
  • general layout stuff like get it to fit arounf teh axoloti better and clearly differentiating functions from each other
  • Choice of which side the joytick sits on if there's room after the shuffling everything around

Thanks for the feedback looking forward to hearing peoples further thoughts.

#19

@Tim052
Sounds ok, like I said, I hadn't taken notice of the spec, it was just the layout I was refering to. Your latest diagram shows exactly what I was getting at regards a group of four, and placing the buttons beneath the encoders - now that makes sense!

Neither the original design or Weasel's did. The good thing about Weasel's version is it makes good use of space, but the bad thing about it is that the button positions do not correlate to the encoders.

You have fixed this in your new bank of four diagram, and that's a big-ass improvement right there, so the next task in design is to place that bank in the right place and in context of the other controls on the panel.

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#20

Thanks for the effort, I'll take 2 :wink:

#21

one more thought, bear in mind you can get most encoder models with a built in switch, so you might not actually want an extra button beneath every single encoder? in general i don't see the use case for a direct conncetion/linear mapping between encoder and button? other than a main "data entry"/"preset" encoder maybe

also i am a bit confused as to why the position of the axo board would matter? won't it be underneath the frontplate, within an enclosure? you should easily be able to put buttons and encoder to whereever you hide the axo board in the back?

i think rgb leds do make a lot of sene in a step sequencer, you could easily indicate different trigger types/samples/velocities etc. or switch colour between banks etc.

another option would be to use illumated pushbuttons instead of button+led, saves you some frontplate real estate.

#22

I think the Idea with the buttons was to swtich between different layers of control.

i really welcome this! bear in mind that with encoders you need some kind of visual feedback to see where the value is. propably that would be the display on the right. as you maybe wanna display 4 values that could be a bit bigger?

One thing to consider with display is also that they should stay readable when you're on the controls.

#23

or maybeeeee if there was some kind of magical colourful LED ring around the encoders to indicate the values wink wink

#24

Yeah as blindsmith said it's for switching the layers of controls

A single pcb is my prefered option over having to seperatly mount and solder the encoders in the face plate.

Illuminated push buttons got nixed as they add about $15 to the cost vs seperate buttons and led's + anouther $20 for button caps that are designed to illuminated i'm trying to keep the cost as low as possible if people want to build at home and for my student budget (right now it's sitting at around $35aud (21 euros)) If there's enough intrest i might consider a varient with illuminated buttons since the electronics would be pretty much the same.

I've seen your project previously and think it looks fantastic would have bought some if the Australian dollar didn't fare so badly against the euro. As for as somthing simlar for this that would be cool but is going to limit it's diy ability and push the cost up substatually.

Bi colour at least seem worthwile for that but i do also really like the nice rectangle led's i'm using there and haven't seem any in that style that are multi colour will mull on this further

#25

Haha yes that is definately the most beautiful and musical solution :wink: But for a first time electronics project maybe too much thats why I didnt suggest it...

#26

Nice project Tim052. Maybe too early for this question... Any ideas on how much it can cost? Will it be a DIY kit or a whole product?

#27

So i've had some time to do a second pass on that layout the first pass was oviouly a bit of mess and was mostly derived from where i found space on the pcb in order to be able to fit everything in with minimal dead space i've decrated the height of the device and widened it to around 31cm which should make the buttons a lot more comfortable to use and of course added the 16th step and some +-/modifier buttons on either side of the step sequencer.

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Current concerns i have with this layout are the bank buttons not clearly indicating that they are linked to bank selection rather than the values of 4 main encoders but having them where they are is a much more effiecnt use of space so that might be a necessary compromise that can be ajusted for by labeling he front plate.

Brave people who are willing to get pcbs made and source the components themselves should be able to do it pretty cheap as far as me selling things i have some ideas regarding cases/faceplates and kits as i have acess to some cnc tools but i don't want to get ahead of of myself till i have somthing thats that has all the basic features working.

#28

Also keep in mind that there might soon be a more powerful Axoloti board around, created by @urklang, which is probably going to be the future of Axoloti.

An the box looks really good now, by the way.

#29

This looks awesome, I would love to get this when it becomes available. I did not read through the entire thread but it looks really cool man.

#30

That's looking way better, Tim, and I like that it has some symmetry to it now, looks a heck of a lot more tidy. Being the stubbornly honest chap I am though, I'm still gonna pick out two personal dislikes about it.

The first thing that stands out as odd is the offset position of the buttons under the knobs. To fix that, I would put the buttons directly beneath the knobs, and instead, put the indicators to the side of the buttons rather than offsett the buttons themselves. This would make it look less odd or skewed, this is because the positions of the buttons and knobs are more noticable than the positions of indicators.

The other thing that stands out as odd is the shape of those bottom corner buttons (yuck). I understand why you did that due to the shape of the case, but to be honest I preferred the hard corners of the original case over the rounded ones of the new one. One other thing to bear in mind is manufacture, cause I'm guessing it will be more difficult and expensive to manufacture the round-cornered case anyway.

That said, I'm just being brutally honest with you; design is my thing and I don't believe in blowing smoke up anyone's backside when they ask for opinions on something regards design. So, other than the two things I just pointed out, I think it's very nice!

#31

Actually, I'd like to add a third dislike about that design. It has to do with the graphic strip you've placed along the top because it creates two problems that would not otherwise even exist.

The first problem it creates is that is makes the unit look smaller than it is. The second problem it creates is that it's driving you to waste panel space at the top. If it were not for that strip, there would be no need to offset buttons or indicators in order to keep it looking tidy.

So the strip doesn't work, it creates two problems and basically, solves nothing. I also think the unit would look better without the strip anyway.

#32

I think the strip is there because the midi and USB ports need more clearance than the rest of the components, so this has to be done to keep the whole unit from being too thick.

#33

To be honest I never imagined it being that small. Why does just about everyone lately seem to have this obsession with things being so small?

When it comes to physical interaction, small is no good, small is bad ergonomics, small is a PITA, and small will always be outclassed by big (as no doubt KORG are learning the hard way right now with Behringer on the scene with their full-sized key Odyssey for a fraction of the price of the utterly pointless down-sized KORG).

I'm guessing Roland are another brand who will never learn :roll_eyes:

I get that people like portable, but does it have to be so thin that the layout is physically effected by it?

The same problem is true with modern cameras, they're nowhere near as nice to use as the older stuff, and mainly it is down to poor ergonomics cause they're too small. I could go on, but don't worry, I won't.

#34

This is shaping up v nicely. I will be picking up a second axoloti when urklangs new H7 based board comes out, think I might have to pair it with a heron control board when you're done :slight_smile:

#35

I had come here looking at how to mux digital signals for the reason of designing a control surface very similar (in my head) to this.
I hope you decide to continue to pursue this.
Whether or not you do continue with it, the link in the first post to the schematic is now dead: Could you (or another helpful board member) repost it, please?

#36

Hi this is still very much still in progress the project has changed quite a bit and now handles the muxing using io expanders over i2c connected with an esp32 which handles demuxing and bunch of other things. It's now more of a midi sequencer with proper screen support and a nice ui etc closely designed to work with both the current Axoloti and the new Asko board. We should have some more concrete hardware to share early next year. At a certain point everyone weighing in on each change is not that helpful in guiding the design in a focused path.