1157 MINI ADSR Module

All done bar that pesky switch, and headers.

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lol - was looking at specs - didnt even glance at the price bahaha.

oof.
longboat from China but -

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This thing has my curiosity piqued now. The ENVGEN8 is basically a PIC if I recall, but it has pin 8 as a “0-5v Envelope Analogue Output/10 bit DAC Envelope Out.” I don’t have as much experience with the PIC16Fs as I do with Arduino, but is that a real DAC or is it a PWM ?

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This page says “The other major improvement is that it now uses an on-chip 10-bit multiplying DAC. This not only means that the need for post-chip filtering is much reduced or eliminated, but also that the Level CV control can be done without loss of resolution.” Looks like it’s using a PIC16F1764 which has a 10 bit DAC.

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Was pretty awesome of Sam to talk about the Switches in the new video!
Thanks @lookmumnocomputer :slight_smile:

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thanks for putting the BOM in PDF , can’t open the other file types .

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Not so much UK itself, but we’re all cheapskates who check budget distributors first :smiley: The big professional distributors all have have plenty of options.

(its probably still a good idea to check what a more limited supplier like Tayda has, and occasionally redesign with less specialized bits – e.g. this one could be done with an on-on/on-off and a separate momentary push-button – or suggest official workarounds like you just did here and in the video. But I suspect you have better things to do with your time than to turn yourself into a component distributor :slight_smile:

EDIT: for the separate push-button case, see @Dud’s wiring sketch here.

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Tip: when in need, web-only tools like Google Sheets. Excel Online and similar can read and import CSV and XLSX files, so if you have a web browser you can open things.

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So this got me curious. Just for the heck of it I hooked a 3.5mm jack to pin 9 of an Arduino Nano Every and loaded/ran the “Fade” sketch from the Examples folder and ran it through some of the inputs on my Crave. It kind of worked-but the PWM made it sound for all the world like an Apple ImageWriter from 1983 when applied to the VCA and VCF cutoff. Where it got interesting was on the VCF resonance-like the ghost of Bubo from “Clash of the Titans” or something. That’s probably as much experimenting as I’m going to do with that setup though. You’re better off using a real DAC or something.

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If you’re using the Nano for PWM you may want to check the different timers, the pins they control, the base frequencies, and the available clock divisors.

LATER: as you’re using the PWM duty cycle to fake an analogue voltage, the simple coupling used for an LED (usually nothing more than a load resistor) will be too noisy for an audio circuit. A capacitor across the output terminals should filter the audio noise out, but you’ll have to experiment to find something that matches your purposes.

Incidentally, the Crave sounds incredibly inexpensive for what it does. One UK eBay seller has 8 new ones available at ÂŁ140 each, postage free, 2 day delivery.

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An MCP4922 ADC isn’t hard to use; yes, it’s another chip and some lines of code. But it’s a clean analog signal. See http://synthhacker.blogspot.com/2016/04/diy-ribbon-controller-cv.html for an example; I have a similar setup on a breadboard right now for an HC-SR04-based controller prototype.

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To be clear, I wasn’t really expecting it to work as an envelope generator or modulator. My instinct was that it would end up being a kind of FM but for the VCA/VCF-which is probably about what the printer sounds were.

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I think it’s perfectly possible to produce a modulation stream or envelope generator from PWM. @analogoutput (who has linked to his wonderful ribbon controller builds above) has correctly pointed out that you can more effectively produce accurate CVs with an inexpensive DAC. I know it’s awful, though, to not have the equipment you want. In that case it’s always a great idea to improvise, as you did.

I should do this more myself (and I probably would if I had enough hands-on time.) I’ve been reading the work by @analogoutput and others (particularly John Simonton of Paia who developed a dual touch ribbon controller) and benefiting greatly from their work, but I know that I should really be mucking around with actual electronics as you are.

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You can also filter out the pwm from an arduino to produce a good looking CV. Read here for an example : https://kassu2000.blogspot.com/2019/10/quantizer.html (“hardware design”).

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Bitnik, that’s not my ribbon controller project I linked to. I did build one following that approach, though.

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I’m sorry. I think I misread your comment on the thread as a response from the original poster. My apologies are due to the poster of that excellent design, and also to you. I liked that insight that a very simple solution to the “wild wiper” problem is to drag the wiper to a fixed voltage (I think you suggested the pull-up resistors on the AVR.)

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I like that idea…but while the drilling part is easy, I would have no idea how to wire it up in order to make it work. :frowning:

extra step for my old lazy ass to do. thanks for the tip though .

Been waiting for my switches, only to realise after posting the ebay link i did not buy them!!

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I do things like that all the time lol.

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