This is a pair of boards and corresponding library which provide CV and gate I/O for an Arduino Nano. It is derived from shaduzlabs/synapse, and there are obvious similarities to ArdCore, but there are significant differences with both.
There are two boards, dac/ino and dac/ino lite.
Differences between these and Synapse are:
Board design with space for Arduino Nano, instead of as Uno style shield
No on-board jacks — pads for Molex or pin connectors (or direct soldering) instead
Simplification by eliminating software-controlled range selection
Number of inputs and outputs is different
dac/ino lite is battery powered and has 0–5V output range, also uses Arduino Vcc as voltage reference
Features
dac/ino has
4 x control voltage inputs, 0 to 5V
2 x control voltage outputs, individually configurable as 0 to 10V or -5 to 5V via jumpers, with 12 bits of resolution
4 x gate inputs (with interrupt)
2 x gate outputs
Pads for additional inputs/outputs: 4 analog, 2 digital
All above inputs/outputs also available via pin headers for daughterboards
Voltage reference chip
1 x eurorack power connector (10 pin)
dac/ino lite has
2 x control voltage outputs, 0 to 5V, with 12 bits of resolution
1 x gate output
Pads for additional inputs/outputs: 4 analog, 4 digital
1 x Molex connector for 6–12V battery or unipolar power supply
(still hoping that KiCad one day starts including a PDF by default when you save the schematics so I can check what you’ve been up to without having to download a 1.2 GB binary, but I guess the BOM will have to do for today )
This is super neat, one piece of hardware for multiple modules…I definitely want to try. (And the gate grinder). I think it’s super cool you also share the files with us! I’ll order some on my next order, I always end up paying more in shipping anyway
I’m gonna take a look at the schematic, but i probably still won’t know what all the resistors and diodes are for… Impedance and protection on the jacks/potential I/O’s?
Yep. Though in fact the circuit mostly is lifted from Synapse with few changes other than to increase the number of inputs, and I’m not 100% certain of the reasons for every little thing myself.
Gave up on the webcam and switched over to the phone…
Update: I’ve been puzzling over various (Linux) video recording apps… Cheese gives bad results with almost no configurability, webcamoid gives a bewildering amount of parameters you can vary and I can’t get consistent good results with it; guvcview out of the box gives much better quality. All these apps suck one way or another, being either too simplistic or too bewildering with a crude and painful interface. But at least (for now) I can get one of them working.
I was wondering, what is the main difference between the MCP4922 used here and the MCP4922 which is used in the soundforce THT braids? With the 4922 you need an external reference voltage, is that the most important difference? could you use the 4822 also for the dac/ino to make it less parts or would that be a bad idea?
Not really familiar with the 4822 but from the datasheet it looks pretty similar aside from the voltage references. The 4822 has an internal 2.048V reference and can be switched to a gain of 2 to get an output voltage range of 0 to 4.096V. The 4922’s range is 0 to Vref, whatever Vref is: 5V in the case of the dac/ino. Also the pinout is different; the 4922 has more pins to accommodate Vref for each channel as well as a shutdown pin the 4822 doesn’t have (and dac/ino doesn’t use).
So with layout changes one presumably could use a 4822 for a similar board, but with a smaller output voltage range. (Or push it up to 0 to 5V or 0 to 10V with higher gain on the amplifier in the output stage.)
If you’re not too fussy about accuracy you can always use the 5V pin from the Arduino for the Vref. Not so good if you want in-tune 1V/oct control voltages though.
awesome you have reinvented the wheel beautifully [ not meant as a derogatory statement ] . with just a face plate and code change you can make a multitude of different modules with better accuracy / more utility than previous versions nice . now someday I may find the time / patience to learn code for these things .
Hey @devicex , programming arduino, teensy, Pi, PIC or any other microcontroller is not hard to learn. There are also many different ways to get working code. My kids used Scratch at primary school which is putting jigsaw pieces together and adding values. There are libraries available for arduino that mean you can make an oscillator in just 4 lines of code and that’s code that someone else has already worked out and can explain. You don’t need to learn to code well to do well with mcu. I got the book 'Arduino for musicians ’ by Brent Edstrom and one of those elgoo starter sets and did a bit every week for a while. Now im looking at things like clouds etc and thinking "I’ve never programmed hardware like that before but as the code is written (even compiled!) And the method documented well and I have places like this for support… no problem then! "
Come on JFDI my friend!
thanks for the vote of confidence [ my kids use scratch at primary school ] . its just putting the time in and not getting frustrated . I should at least try though , those programmable boards analogoutput is making look very interesting .
It takes a lot less time than you might think to learn the process of putting code and hardware together. After that you can paddle or dive.
Sorry. I should say I mentioned my kids only as an example of how little time and effort it takes to learn. No pop intended and I apologize for any offense my friend.
oh sorry I didn’t mean for my reply to sound that way , no offense taken . matter of fact I found it kinda funny how quickly kids can pick stuff up . my youngest was accurately typing over 80 words a minute before he was out of grade school , but then he grew up using the keyboard . I should put some time into learning a new skill it would be good for me.
When I started it was punch cards, tape and disks you could hide behind. Every functional piece of equipment from cooling fan to blinky light had its own circuitry and method that varied wildly by manufacturer, even if using the same schematic.
Now? Arduino? Plug in like this, hook up like so, load public code like that.
I used to have to know how to boot an AS400 from the keypad on the box panel.
Arduino. Will take a few hours tops to complete one of the many free courses covering it all. Not in depth. But enough to do most things.
