{"id":404,"date":"2009-03-06T02:33:25","date_gmt":"2009-03-06T06:33:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.glacialcommunications.com\/news\/?p=404"},"modified":"2009-03-06T02:33:25","modified_gmt":"2009-03-06T06:33:25","slug":"the-effects-processor-im-not-building-this-month","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.glacialcommunications.com\/news\/2009\/03\/the-effects-processor-im-not-building-this-month\/","title":{"rendered":"The effects processor I&#8217;m not building this month."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In my <a href=\"https:\/\/www.glacialcommunications.com\/news\/?p=398\">last post<\/a>, I mentioned that I had a good idea shortly after declaring &#8220;no new projects for a little while.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Doesn&#8217;t mean I can&#8217;t talk about it. And hey, maybe one of you readers will take up the torch and design the schematic, PCB and\/or firmware for me, so that when I clear my project backlog, it&#8217;s ready to go!<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve gotten really interested in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spinsemi.com\/\">Spin Semiconductor FV-1<\/a> effects processor IC. It&#8217;s got built-in ADCs and DACs (so it&#8217;s a one-chip solution unlike some others), and if I&#8217;m reading the information on the web correctly, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spinsemi.com\/knowledge_base\/xtal.html\">they almost seem to be encouraging the equivalent of a &#8216;clock bend&#8217;<\/a>. I&#8217;m sort of curious as to how slowly it can be clocked &#8211; their examples don&#8217;t go below 20 kHz, but I wonder how lo-fi one could get it. I should ask on the messageboard&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s kind of the feature set I was imagining:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Switchable clock rate, between a fixed clock (at the suggested 32768 kHz or maybe better if you&#8217;re some kind of audiophile type), and the variable schmitt trigger clock outlined on the website, possibly tweaked to go lower if that&#8217;s technically feasible. Hot-switching between modes need not be required- I&#8217;d be cool with having to power-cycle it when changing clock mode from fixed to variable.<\/li>\n<li>The FV-1 on its own supports the use of a Serial EEPROM for additional effects programs. Change this to some kind of bank-switching multiplexing arrangement to allow multiple Serial EEPROMs to be used.<\/li>\n<li>Front panel\/microcontroller. Use something like an ATMega168 (preferably with Arduino-type bootloader so upgrades to the firmware are easy, and include the headers for an FTDI programming cable!)\u00c2\u00a0 to control a 2&#215;20 character LCD panel, and set the bank\/program numbers. If you need more inputs, outputs or memory, feel free to use something bigger (ATMega644p in a Sanguino arrangement, etc.) Don&#8217;t worry about program names for the external banks. &#8220;BANK 3, PROGRAM 4&#8221; is fine. Feel free to use whatever menu navigating mechanism you want (buttons, pots, etc.)<\/li>\n<li>Additional features would be up to you. If you can add a simple mechanism for uploading new effects programs to the Serial EEPROMs (especially from Mac OS X), that would win, but I&#8217;ll live with the possibility of using a separate EEPROM writer and removing\/inserting the ICs.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>A starting point for looking into <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spinsemi.com\/forum\/viewtopic.php?t=93\">might be this one<\/a>, but I think I want mine in a 1U rack form factor &#8211; I&#8217;ve got too many desktop doodads already, and it&#8217;s time to get vertical. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.andrewkilpatrick.org\/blog\/?p=779\">This post<\/a> also has some tantalizing ideas (Arduino as EEPROM writer! Write your DSP code\u00c2\u00a0 in Java!) but they&#8217;re not released yet.<\/p>\n<p>So, there&#8217;s my idea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In my last post, I mentioned that I had a good idea shortly after declaring &#8220;no new projects for a little while.&#8221; Doesn&#8217;t mean I can&#8217;t talk about it. And hey, maybe one of you readers will take up the torch and design the schematic, PCB and\/or firmware for me,&#8230; <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.glacialcommunications.com\/news\/2009\/03\/the-effects-processor-im-not-building-this-month\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arduino","category-electronics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glacialcommunications.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glacialcommunications.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glacialcommunications.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glacialcommunications.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glacialcommunications.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=404"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.glacialcommunications.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":410,"href":"https:\/\/www.glacialcommunications.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404\/revisions\/410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glacialcommunications.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glacialcommunications.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glacialcommunications.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}