MOTM

Paul Schreiber wrote:
> Here is a brief outline of the direction I am going:
> 
> 1) It's modular
> 2) Has full MIDI control, but all outputs are analog
> 3) Patch memory
> 4) I can be BIG. I mean *REALLY BIG* - 256 stages x 64 rows
> 5) The modules are tied to a local LAN than reconfigures the modules, ie
> Plug-&-Play.
> 6) This being MOTM and all, no cheesy pots. We're talking optical encoders,
> baby!
> 7) uP will be in C programming, with "open source code" posted on the
> website.

Okay, I've given this some thought. I would a sequencer that
supported downloadable "personalities." For example, I may
want to read from the ADC and select a stage according to
voltage, i.e. voltage control stage select. I may want to
play with random numbers or markov chains, e.g. set up 
probabilities for each stage based on previous stage, etc. 

One interesting idea is to be able to download code via midi.
I nibblize my program and pack it in a sysex message and when
sent to the device it gets flashed to ram. Imagine people
posting new "personalities" to the web. Could really drive
sales.

I might still like to have a parallel or serial port to
drive it directly from my PC without going thru midi.
Especially if this is bi-directional. If I could use
the knobs on the device to drive software on my computer
this would be an extremely important new "personality."
It's a sequencer, no it's a programmer, no it's MOAS!

Oh yeah, fast enough to do waveform generation.
So it's a wavestation too.

Another important feature would be to use a uP that is
supported by GCC (the GNU C compiler). Setting up GCC 
as a cross-compiler to run on unix or windows is fairly 
easy. I'd be willing to help on this. This gives everyone 
free tools to program with. GCC tends to work better with 
32 bit or higher processors, but I believe some MIPS chips 
can be had for as little as ten dollars each. I'm not sure 
what <32 bit uP are supported by GCC, I can look into this 
if there's interest. Here's a short list of supported 
platforms: 

http://www.cygnus.com/gnupro/gnupro-platforms.html

The MOAS could be the center-piece of the studio with these 
features. Think of the possibilities. With 128 stages I 
could use my computer to read midi from my keyboard and 
thru the parallel port select stages, now I have a midi 
to cv converter that supports microtonal tunings and 
just intonation. 

Just some thoughts,
Thomas