Dont want to bore you, but what would bé thé final form of it? Do you plan kit or assembled or nothing??
Anyway what you arer cooking seem tasty…
too much work and no play can cause gastritis 
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Printing with transparent filaments will come up as frosted glass (at best). So sadly, you wont be able to see the electronics with any clarity.
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I have to clarify, my function here is only as a designer.
The goal has been to resurrect the MiniCommand hardware in a self-sustaining DIY form with easily obtainable parts and construction method (in the spirit of the open source embedded platforms ie arduino).
You’ll be able to order your own PCBs, purchase the electrical components, 3D print yourself a case, or get a metal enclosure pre-milled.
One of the reasons the original MiniCommand went out of production is because the sole manufacturer of these units (Wesen) was no longer able to keep up with the demand of running a design, fabrication and distribution business. To prevent this from happening again, I’m attempting to shift the burden of fabrication and distribution to the end-user and parts-manufacturers respectively.
Of course, if the community or individuals want to take up the slack in some of these areas that would be welcome.
Cheers,
- Justin
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Finally had time to test out the 3D printed enclosure and we have a small problem.
Image below illustrates the frustration behind the design and fit. The MIDI ports are being clipped by the lip of the lid.
As you can see we are 1-2mm off from everything fitting nicely.
I’m investigating a few options here.
Stick with the original enclosure, but remove material from the Lip such that the MIDI ports are fully accessible.
Not sure if this is a routine procedure on a CNC mill? Might limit us to 3D printed enclousures only.
Go for 3d Printed Model. I could extend the height of original enclosure by a few mm for everything to fit perfectly.
Thoughts welcome.
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whatever you decide, it would be great to have the 3D printed option available, so please post the files when you can (assuming you haven’t) … i suspect some users will want to print out their enclosure well in advance to be sure it will work for them.
Shooting you a PM Justin.
The 3D print option is becoming more appealing to me. I hacked in to the PLA last night and the material quality is excellent.
All files are uploaded here as I work on them.
Please note that as of this time the enclosure case has errors (MIDI ports on wrong face)
PCBs are obviously not finalized.
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PLA is a pretty decent material for light/office use although if you take it to a gig and someone drops a Jupiter 8 on it, it probably won’t do well.
The good news is that if it works in PLA, then you can go get something like this to make it more gig-proof.
Carbon fiber composite 1: http://www.matterhackers.com/store/3d-printer-filament/proto-pasta-carbon-fiber-reinforced-pla-175mm-075-kg
Carbon fiber composite 2: http://www.matterhackers.com/store/3d-printer-filament/nylonx-carbon-fiber-nylon-filament-1.75mm
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One might be slightly more interested in the Jupiter 8, but anyway 
haha i am totally going to print mine in frosted transparent plastic, and put a couple of l.e.d. lights in there, to attract focus to Justin’s fabulous PCB design. And also serve as a notification-of-presence to any wayward Jupiter 8’s…
yes, it is a question of style before safety, but sometimes it is worth it…
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Update:
By removing material from the lid we have enough clearance for midi cables.This means we can use both the original enclosure or a 3D printed model. To make this work some excess plastic has to be removed from the MIDI ports and we are going to use the upper LCD header and solder a pin header to it after the MIDI ports are in place on board.
I’ve assembled the unit and there is sufficient headroom between the LCD, enclosure and buttons to allow correctly mechanical action of button presses.
Some annoyances.
I broke the USART header on my arduino mega. I have a replacement header but no solder wick remaining to clean up the board. This is delaying MIDI testing
LCD is no longer functioning. I had to unsolder the LCD to install the MIDI components. I also had to reposition the contrast pot as the component I have was too tall preventing the enclosure to fit correctly. After re-assembling the LCD is not working and troubleshooting has been unproductive.
To do:
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Test MIDI ports
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Test LEDs
2.1) LEDs to be reposition on board, they are currently too close the LCD. -
Test SD Card
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Increase LCD header pad size for better mechanical stability and lower risk of ripping up copper traces.
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Power switch and external power connector testing.
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Mechanical Fastening of Board to Enclosure. Need to decide on fasteners to use
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How do we attach the Lid to the body of the enlosure, the 3d printed screw holes have no threads.
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Reduce LCD window size. Reposition USB hole. Reposition MIDI holes. Reposition power hole. Increase power switch slot size
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Fabricate new circuit boards.Assemble and test.
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Port the minicommand core to the the Arduino Mega and MegaCommand hardware.
Until this is done there is no guarantee the design works with Wesen’s code.
This is essential to make the MIDICtrl framework work with the Megacommand. Currently I’m using all the in built arduino libraries (+ custom code for SRAM) to test the various subsystems.
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great that you keep going with this!
thought:
would it possibly be better to ditch the arduino platform and go with raspberry pi? Pretty sure I’ve seen some MIDI shield thing which you can stack on it. Or, just use a TM-1 via USB.
Like, it could potentially minimize the work necessary for custom PCB things.
Also, software development on Pi is easier since you can just SSH from a normal computer and also use something like Python or even JavaScript… installing new software is easy…
Plus, it could be expanded to work with the newer USB-midi elektrons as well…
Of course it would make it more difficult to use the legacy mini command software, but tbh it’s not that complex and all the existing things could be rewritten…
it’s not gonna boot as quickly as an atmega, but not an issue imho…
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Hi Void,
Yes there were many directions the project could have taken.
I wanted to keep things as close to the original MiniCommand design and possible. Originally for compatibility, but also I didn’t want to design a completely new platform, I wanted new users to be able run the MIDICtrl framework and MiniCommand firmwares on their own hardware.
There are trade offs here obviously, with far more powerful embedded computers now available.
The need to design a custom PCB came from the complexity of wiring up the IO circuit. Too many components for a breadboard style build. And also, having all the components perfectly aligned to fit inside a standardised enclosure. It just wasn’t going to work without some design constraints imposed from the beginning.
The first run of proto- PCBs was highly successful, in that everything appears to be working correctly. I anticipate I will only need another revision to fix some minor issues.
The MIDICtrl framework could use Octatrack, RYTM and Analog 4 libraries, if you feel like open-sourcing your code.
Cheers,
- Justin
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Brothers.
Using the hex nut around the encoder threads, fastened against the top the enclosure, and the back of the midi ports pressing against the bottom of the lid is giving us 90% mechanical stability. Simplest solution, and I think i’ll take it.
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there needs to be a “Wow!” emoticon.
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MIDI tested. Had a few days of frustration trying to workout why the first MIDI in port wasn’t working.
Turned out to be from a broken trace from installing/removing the LCD. I will correct the routing in the next rev so that power is routed directly to essential ICs.
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SD Card tested.
All MegaCommand functionality is working with standard arduino libraries.
I will now finalise the PCB design and parts specification. Fabricate another run of pcbs
Fully assemble and fit in to enclosure.
And hopefully we will then be done hardware wise.
2nd enclosure design printed today.
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Awesome!
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1_0_0c gerbers and stl files
New boards are off for fab. Parts list inbound.
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this is almost too fabulous
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