Posted inanalog3

USB Serial Communication with PSoC Pioneer Kit

Exchanging data with PSoC Pioneer Kit over serial communication is often useful. The kit CY8CKIT-042 has a built in USB-to-UART utility programmed in the PSoC 6LP device which is used for onboard debugger for the target PSoC 4. It is easy to use. See below. https://www.element14.com/community/thread/23868/l/psoc-4-pioneer-kit-community-project04-usb-uart-utility?displayFullThread=true
Posted inanalog3

Installed Necessary Applications

I like OS X as a software development platform (and electronic stationery); On the other hand, it's much better to use Windows for hardware development because of better coverage of development tools. As a compromise, I own MacBook and runs Windows under Parallels Desktop for hardware development. I have no issues with this style so far thanks to the powerful USB support by Parallels. My Windows platform has reached disk size full at 64GB. I decided to extend the disk size and re-install everything. Here are highlights of my Windows platform: Windows 10, display language = English PSoC creator 3.2 for the PSoC development platform. 3.3 is installed by I…
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MIDI Receiver Module

My PSoC Creator application became unstable suddenly. I could not work on software today. I'm now recovering the software. Meanwhile, I made a MIDI receiver module instead. Developing and debugging MIDI Rx would be easier and less troublesome hopefully. Not yet verified the behavior.
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Analog2.0 is restored, started making Volume Control Module

I restored the Analog2.0 set successfully. It's working fine now. The Volume Control Module substitutes existing VCA and envelope generator. EG part will generate linear volume control voltage for analog VCA. I will reuse VCA in Analog2.0 for analog part.
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Analog3: The First Use Case

One year has passed since I stopped working on Analog 3. Now it's time to resume the development. The picture above is the first use case of Analog 3. This is a draft panel layout of the synth I want to make. The panel includes least set of parameters I want. Many parameters on this panel has non-traditional style, like ones in VCA. I will need to revise and adjust such parameters. In order to avoid remaking hardware modules, I will control the risk by following approach: Develop the synth by modifying a working complete set of synthesizer, i.e., the base platform. I will use the Analog2.0 fundamental set for…
Posted inanalog3 tech notes

exp() calculation for micro processors

You frequently encounter a situation that exponential function is necessary when you work on a musical instrument project using micro processors.  Its generic implementation is slow and space consuming, so is not suitable for micro processors.  So I need to do some alternative implementations.  For those implementations, space and speed is important but accuracy may be sacrificed in many cases. Follows are articles about fast and compact exp() implementations, for my future reference. http://www.convict.lu/Jeunes/ultimate_stuff/exp_ln_2.htm http://www.quinapalus.com/efunc.html I'm currently using a table lookup approach that I implemented before for an envelope generator I prototyped before.指 This one is still a little slow and large, but it's running in PSoC 4200 without major…
Posted inanalog3 tech notes

Memo: Maven

Installation How to install Maven on Windows Maven is a Java application, so we are just fine with expanding product zip package and setting environment variables M2_HOME and JAVA_HOME and set PATH. Creating a Maven Project Maven in 5 Minutes Maven in 5 seconds... dothis: mvn archetype:generate -DgroupId=com.mycompany.app -DartifactId=my-app -DarchetypeArtifactId=maven-archetype-quickstart -DinteractiveMode=false
Posted inanalog3 tech notes

Stub Synth Module for MOM Development

MOM (Master Of Modules) manages synthesizer modules to make them work as a single musical instrument.  The main responsibilities of MOM are Control patching. Control parameters. Organize voices. (possibly) Organize modules such as device ID management. Designing and implementing MOM and synth module data model is yet another challenge out of building CAN network.  Basically, the inter-module communication depends on CAN physical layer, but it's a pain to dragging such a dependency during the MOM development.  I'm sure the CAN network would be quite unstable at first and I don't want to stop and troubleshoot CAN while I'm working on MOM. So, in order to remove dependency on CAN network,…
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MCP2515 CAN Controller

As I mentioned in the previous article, I'll use MCP2515 CAN controller for inter-module communication (initially, at least) for the Analog3 Project. Datasheet of this device is available at the product page. MCP2515 consists of CAN protocol engine, data buffers,  controller, and SPI interface as illustrated in the picture below. You need to attach a processor to make this device functional.  In early phase of the project, I'm thinking of using a Raspberry Pi as the Master Of Modules (mom) and Arduino's for dummy synthesizer modules.  Arduino is not a realistic solution for Analog3 both in terms of cost and performance.  So, I'm thinking of implementing a common synthesizer module…
Posted inanalog3 tech notes

Changing the Strategy for Analog3

I've been trying for a year to make my own serial interface protocol to exchange data among synth modules.  Though it showed some progress, I kind of giving up this approach.  The problem is complexity of serial interface controller.  A controller for multi-master serial interface is complex.  Implementing using a generic device is more costly in many sense than I expected.  I started with Arduino.  This was the easiest approach but channel was too slow.  I could only achieve 50kbps.  Then I tried implementing it into AVR using assembler language.  It went 100kbps but it was about the limit.  The most serious problem with MPU was that the processing is…