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Intermediate steps before progressing to fpga.

ohmgroan

Hello everybody.

 

I am a musician who can no longer perform at the level I'm accustomed to due to injury. While this sounds sad, I am very positive and excited about my new direction, as it has provided me with the impetus and the time to work towards a childhood dream: designing and making my own gear. I started off simply by buying the hx-3 board from keyboard partner; a hammond organ on a FPGA. This project meant all the hard work was done for me, leaving just some soldering, resistors,pots, switches and config etc. Following on from this I have experimented with arduino and standalone AVRs to create some midi controllers, and used the asus tinkerboard as a spotify/iplayerradio over SPDIF.

 

Inspired by a couple of individuals on the internet I am currently working on a couple of projects, namely the arduino solina string synth (which I have redisigned to be a standalone atmega device) and the raspberry Pi mellotron, which I am attempting to do my own way without instruction, due to having years of linux experience.

 

The thing is, although these are great projects in their own right, I really see them as baby steps towards my end goal, which I envision will be largely DSP/FPGA based. However I still find these technologies quite intimidating, and I feel if I try to jump straight in, I may quickly kill my enthusiasm and perseverance.

 

Can anybody please recommend any direction that may either provide some intermediate steps, or perhaps some development packages that introduce these technologies in a friendly, logical way. They don't have to be super powerful, as long as they can provide the means to develop my skills.

 

I should mention that my knowledge of the logical topologies of synths and other audio equipment is good, I just need to learn how to use these technologies to implement my ideas.

 

Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

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  • Thank you for such a considered response John.

     

    It seems you have some similar ideas to my own, I certainly intend to use organ parts for the atmel solina and raspi mellotron, as there is no need for velocity, channel pressure or aftertouch.

    I have been prototyping a control panel that does for those paddle type pots found on early yamaha organs what rotary encoders do in place of regular pots.

    My main motivation for this is to make a modern equivalent of the control surface of early Yamaha's like the GX-1; I'm just a little obsessed by this instrument, in particular the inclusion of manual couplers that can be blended as opposed to simply on/off. I've also built a knee lever, but lets be honest, that's just an expression pedal in different clothing.

    A good size pedalboard is also something I'm keen to build, although I have absolutely no experience of playing them, and I'm not much of a dancer, so it would be interesting.

     

    From your input, I think I should just go right ahead and dip my toe into the FPGA domain, this leaves just one question:

     

    Of the FPGA boards available, which are best supported by the community, with plenty of clear examples?

     

    Thanks in advance.

  • in reply to ohmgroan

      wrote:

     

    Of the FPGA boards available, which are best supported by the community, with plenty of clear examples?

     

    I'm not the best one to ask: my FPGA use goes back decades so I haven't needed new user resources for a long time.  I am impressed with the Papilio (Gadget Factory) resources from skimming them quickly.  I have three Papilio boards and I love the way they bring out so many I/Os.  Not long ago Papilio's creator had to take a day job so he's not able to devote as much time to Papilio as he used to, but I think there's a lot of resources accumulated over time.

     

    Lucie Tozer's DEO-NANO blog is excellent for showing how to climb the learning curve as a new user.

     

    There have been some great discussions over the years at the element14 FPGA group:

     

    Barriers to designing with FPGAs?

    Some FPGA Beginner Questions

    Not-as-expensive FPGA Boards

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  • in reply to johnbeetem

    Thanks again for your input, John.

     

    The links you've provided not only point directly to some good reading, but also the links on those pages open up a whole fractal of recursive links. I swear, if I click on them all I will have read the entire internet. image

     

    Above all, the feedback on this page as convinced me it's time to quit stalling. It's official my next dev board will be FPGA; I'm still deciding which one, and I have a lot of good information to help me decide.