Analogue-sequencer

Folks,

I seem to be getting more emails of the 'when is P4 coming out' 
variety these days, and just as little spare time to answer them, so 
I thought I'd post a summary of where the P4 project has got to here 
so I can refer people to it with the flick of a link...

The new sequencer is to be called the Sequentix Cirklon.
The OS will be a superset of P3 functionality, taking the P3 v4 OS 
as a starting point.
In fact I already have an intermediate prototype which has a P3 
front panel with an ARM7 CPU dev board behind it, running the ported 
v4 OS.

The ARM CPU is a 32-bit part, with considerably more oomph than the 
P3 CPU.
It provides four hardware serial ports, so there will be four fully 
independent MIDI outputs, and at least two MIDI ins - maybe all four 
if I can think of a use for so much input.
Internal storage will rise to at least 1MB of battery-backed RAM 
(just less than double a MemXed P3), but there will also be flash 
memory card storage, so that internal RAM will only need to hold 
banks currently in use, or being loaded.

Software changes will include a simpler method for organising and 
assigning patterns to tracks, and a more flexible replacement 
for 'parts'.
Additions will include a linear song mode, and some other cool stuff 
I wont divulge until I'm sure I can make it work ;-)
I'm fed up using my 909's internal sequencer (cant even go into edit 
mode without stopping!), so dedicated percussion programming is 
going in.
Cirklon will also support native, hi-res CV and gate ouputs.

The Cirklon mainboard is currently a work in progress, as a well as 
a learning experience for me in a new PCB design package, but I'm 
getting on pretty well with it now, and aim to have a proto board 
ready in the next month.

The physical user-interface for Cirklon is yet to be finalised, but 
my plan is for the mainboard to support far more switches, LEDs, 
pots, encoders and alphanumeric displays than I could possibly 
require.
That will allow me to build a hideously over-knobbed prototype that 
can be reduced to something a bit more sensible for production.

Best regards,
Colin Fraser
Sequentix Music Systems Ltd
http://www.sequentix.com