Yup that sounds sweet,,, and I have looked a little into the PIC devices with the support firmware to talk to computer networks. But this is a step up in complexity for me.promixe wrote:I thought about this a lot and what's most appealing to me personally is going the WEB route. Pretty much every computer device on the market (including phones, etc.) has a browser built in. These browsers are optimized for HTML5/Java speed and are very stable. It's a lot easier to code an interactive web page that IMMEDIATELY works on every platform/CPU/device rather then coding a cross-platform application code, maintaining it is another story. You use a auto discovery protocol, something like Bonjour to automatically assign your audio device a domain name, you go to 1.jrdevice.com and there is your control interface for it. There is no serial-to-USB or serial-to-Ethernet adapter you need to plug in, in fact, you can plug the audio device into any router or even control it being in a different country, while listening to the changes through ISDN stream. =) On the audio device side you run a tiny embedded web server with your web pages loaded in and the server translates what it gets from the client into SPI. Hardware-wise you'd need something like PIC32 or AVR32 chip with Ethernet-MAC built in + a separate Ethernet PHY chip.JR. wrote:PS: I have a passing interest in cybernetic control of analog audio circuits. Not unlike this project. I have (too many) ideas for computer controlled comp/limiter, and other projects associated with simple level and pans... I would love some advice about how to get the last mile between the users mouse clicks and a serial digital data stream I can decode for specific analog controls. I am guessing something like midi outputs, a variant of serial com that can be decoded (for simple level and pan). The uber comp may need some more sophisticated control layers (custom sliders?).
This is not an immediate project for me, so no hurry, but i would love to hear advice from you, who are already doing something similar. My brain is already crushed by too many secret handshakes so I don't want to have to design PC interfaces, or PC software too.
SSL is doing it like that with their consoles, primarily for preset/recall management, configuration, etc.
Yes this sounds attractive to me... It rather elegantly leap frogs the PC/MAC?driver issue, just go straight to hosting a virtual web page.This may seem too complex of an idea, but the most work would be on the audio device side, while on the user side there wouldn't be much to do because you would just use existing technologies (TCP/IP, browser, HTML5/AJAX). Now, if you needed absolute precision or sample-accurate control of your device then this idea wouldn't work as there is a typical 3-6ms delay between push of a button on the screen and SPI message out of the chip (given typical home LAN latency). Again, this is what seems ideal to me personally, because it looks daunting to code an application for OSX, getting it to work right, then doing a Windows version (even if reusing half the code, which then would compromise Mac's Objective-C workflow), then Linux, iPad crowds get left in the cold, then next version of Windows comes out and here I am redoing the app because some API I relied on is now discontinued. =) Then there is extra hardware on the client side that needs to deal with RS-232/RS-485 (something like a USB adapter, that you forget at home when rushing to an important remote recording gig). =) Don't discount the benefit of wireless when going TCP/WEB route. I was playing a concert a few months ago, the sound guy was walking around the venue with an iPad adjusting everything on the fly with his Yamaha setup.
I can justify a business rational for pursuing this, for my day job (drum tuners). At some future generation I need to talk to and be controlled by IPHONEs or whatever, if they still make those when I get around to this.
I am a little apprehensive about the current drain of full wireless (for my tuner) but I can probably recharge batteries through a USB port. I put a USB port on my first generation platform but never got around to making it do anything.
I am slowly coming to the conclusion that I need to get on top of this TCP/IP stuff.. Hopefully if i drag my feet long enough there will be a canned solution (that I can afford to use).An RTAS/VST/AU plugin could be coded that would run inside of a DAW and maintain TCP/IP stream into your device. Now we're talking about full automation and recall of your analog gear within your Pro Tools session file - a dream for mixing / recording engineers.
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I have some ideas for an simple digitally controlled analog mixer that could A) be both controllable from protools or whatever, and B) cleaner than SOTA analog mixers. This seems like more of a science fair project than real product but people pay silly amounts of money for dangerous boxes, why not take that up another notch? Likewise I have some ideas for the comp/limiter from hell, but need a soft interface to manage all the control possibilities (too many knobs and switches for a hardware version). But these are not day light projects , more after two beers "what if", mental masturbation, but could fall out of learning how to talk to PDAs and puters, which is arguably a valid need for my day time work.
JR
