Digitone/Digitakt breakout box [work in progress]

Same ill buy two for DN+DT.

Best of luck with the project

Im on board as well.

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Wow, amazing work!

Perfectly reasonable. If I have a stable income when theyā€™re available (I donā€™t at the moment :stuck_out_tongue:) Iā€™ll buy one for sure.

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This is really incredible, and something I have been thinking about for a long while. I had been thinking of a device that mounts to the bottom of the digitakt/digitone and gives individual outputs, as well as battery power for the DT/DN and perhaps a speaker. That is what I always dreamed of. Sort of like the game boy advance player that mounted to the bottom of the gamecube.

I have to be honest and say that I likely would not buy one for the forseeable future (year) as I am in a bit of a tough spot financially. If I had the money though I think It would resolve most of the things that I dislike about the devices.

The current design is small enough to fit under the DT/DN, but because the ports are on both sides (USB on one side and 1/4" PLs on the other) it will be suboptimal. I need to look more into enclosure solutions, and maybe I could find a way to put all connectors on one side in which case it would fit well under the DT/DN. I want to keep the price down so I wonā€™t have a lot of wiggle room when it comes to figuring out the enclosure.

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Iā€™m very glad to see people are interested in this :smiley:
Iā€™ll spend some time over the next few weeks cleaning up the code and making it updatable (so you could plug it into your laptop and download a new version, in case bugs are found or new device support is added for other Elektron gear). I will also spend time on figuring out what kind of enclosure I could put this in, and then hopefully try and set up a small group purchase for whoever wants to have one!

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The first thing I thought about was a wedge shaped thing that sits under the unit and can act as a stand, with indentations on top so the feet can fit in and not slide :slight_smile:

I think keeping it bare and letting people design their own enclosure would be a good economical option. Iā€™d certainly try to design something for it. As you mentioned the outputs and usb plug are on opposite sides, it could be interesting to design something where the ports are hidden away and everything plugs in neatly underneath the unitā€¦ though that could require a bit more space.

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This is so cool. Not something I have a need for myself but very impressive.

On a tangent, I wish that it was possible to write custom USB drivers on iOS, would be neat to be able to access the OB audio stream on a connected iPad but as far as I know this is not possible without a special licence from Apple.

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Thatā€™s really nice!

Something I may be missing tho, thereā€™s only one USB port, so you cannot use your device AND overbridge, right? What about a ā€œUSB thruā€?
Type-b usb splitters are not that commons and it would be nice to be able to use both the external outs of your device and overbridge (you may want to send one channel to some pedals and bring it back to the DN via the external input and record it in overbridge, for exampleā€¦).
Iā€™m sure youā€™ll sell more of them if you donā€™t force people to choose between your device and overbridge.
But once again, I may be missing something there.

Cool very cool
I would buy two 1 for the DT and 1 for the DN

Very cool - I wonder if this could be adopted for other audio and midi over USB protocols such as Rolands aira link?

Iā€™d love to see some kind of standard that would allow audio and midi over USB to be as universal as the midi protocol, it would benefit everyone I think, not sure how likely it would be though.

But great work @eranrund well done!

A splitter wonā€™t work here ā€” USB is an active, two-way digital channel, and two devices canā€™t have host status for the same device (unless itā€™s got two separate device ports, in which case itā€™s two different devices, as far as USB is concerned).

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An input breakout for the Aira devices would be amazing. The MX-1 seems like it could be a really slick live tool if it worked with non-Roland hardware. Four mono plus seven stereo channels (counting the Aira channels, the class compliant one, and the analog and SPDIF channels), plus a stereo send and return and a pile of midi-syncā€™d effects in a portable footprint ā€” itā€™d be like a grown up BlueBox (minus the recording).

Hi everyone!

Again trying to reply to everyone and hoping not to miss anything.

  • Iā€™m going to try and place all connections on one side of the board while keeping itā€™s overall width narrower than the DT/DN for the next hardware revision

  • If I do manage to get this to a point where I can sell some units or kits I would offer an option to buy it without enclosure.

  • People who have voiced interest in purchasing a unit here - would you still be interested if it came without an enclosure? That could potentially allow me to reduce costs and also to deliver it muck quicker.

  • Having this device also relay the OB connection to a laptop is going to be out of scope due to hardware limitations. The microcontroller I am using only has one usb high speed controller (and a secondary usb full speed controller which I will use for firmware upgrades). Even if hardware wasnā€™t the limiting factor, it would complicate the software and add too many variables (everyone has their own unique laptop setup). Given the stability issues even with a straight OB connection, I wouldnā€™t want to open that can of worms in my own project. It would be hard for me to guarantee the stability I am hoping to provide.

  • I think this could be adapted for Aira or the Rytm Mk2 but it would require more software development. I think these devices uses a different type of USB transfer (isochronous vs interrupt in the DT/DN) and the USB stack I am using does not have good support for that so while technically possible, would involve many hours of coding.

  • Thereā€™s definitely room to grow this concept :slight_smile: For the first version I am trying to keep it to the minimum viable product since I want to keep costs down as well as reduce the amount of things that might not work.

Cheers!

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Whenever this is completedā€¦take my money

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Sounds great, Iā€™d love to have one :+1:t3:

I donā€™t have either of these devices but this is really great work, congratulations!

Super cool work, Iā€™ll take one !

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Very cool! I am very interested

i will buy one for my digitakt and one for my digitone if you ever end up selling kits of this, also cool without an enclosure, can always try to 3d print or lego something up in the future