MIDI retrofit for CR-78 Part 1

YouTube via MusicMiK

"This is the documentation of retrofitting MIDI into a Roland CR-78 using my MIDItriggs project. The first 4 parts include the mechanical work, modifications to the CR-78 and installation of the board in a good detail level.

Next year (read as tomorrow or so :), i will add the hardware driver for the planned CR-78 features to the firmware and create a last video showing the features of this retrofit. With the last video, the project will be available again on my website, being completely open source, including schematics, documentation and board layout, so you can make your own kit.

One more thing to say - i had some bad experience because there are people in the world interpreting „open source as „he does your custom development for free. This is not the case. I dont sell kits, i dont adapt MIDItriggs for your beatbox and in general i stopped answering questions about all my DIY stuff, as this eats up so much time that i no longer have time for the DIY hobby.

So if you contact me, dont be angry if you dont get any response. I just dont have the time and motivation to work for others, i want to make my own DIY ideas come true, not yours.

If i get another beatbox (i dont have a CR-78, its from a friend, i just have the Hohner Automatic Rhythm Player, which was the start of the MIDItriggs project), i will add it to MIDItriggs. But i still will not make and sell kits. This is your job - using the material you soon can find on my website again.

I wish you all a good start into 2010, happy new year!"

Update:

MIDI retrofit for CR-78 Part 2


MIDI retrofit for CR-78 Part 3


MIDI retrofit for CR-78 Part 4


Update:

MIDI retrofit for CR-78 Part 5


Update:

MIDI retrofit for CR-78 Part 6


"This part shows the tight timing i built into the MIDItriggs for the CR-78, while this machine is not the easiest to handle for perfect MIDI sync. There still is one clock offset when recording the internal sequencer data of the CR-78 via MIDI, but this feature might not so interesting anyway.

The write switch is also shown in this video, which has a perfect timing, as long as you don't start in measure 1 of your MIDI sequencer software, this makes trouble due to the startup time of the CR-78. The patterns are 2 measures long, so just use 2 empty measures, then the notes for the write switch.

I found the problem of the strange doubling sound - it was due to "any note" triggering the write switch, so the selected instrument got triggered twice. This is fixed now, it now uses "any unassigned note" for the write switch. This simplifies recording:

BD in measure 3-5, HH in measure 7-9, SD in measure 11-13, Accent in measure 15-17, all as recorded, transposed 12 semitones down (to hit unassigned notes), record off (to not send back triggers received from the CR-78), start, instrument selector to BD, wait until measure 6, instrument selector to HH, wait until 10, select SD, wait until 14, select Accent, wait until 18, stop, done, whole rhythm in the programmable area.
Maybe i create another video about this.

All features seem to work fine now, i will now update the documentation and publish MIDItriggs version 1.0 on http://www.mik-music.org/MIDItriggs today or tomorrow. Ready-to-go for your CR-78 :)

Please keep in mind that i don't have the time to build kits for you or implement more features you might like to see. This project is open source, so you can fit it to your needs on your own. I likely ignore questions about it that are answered in the documentation or source code."

BeatBoxBattle CR-78 versus RM1x


"During the final testing of the MIDItriggs retrofit for the CR-78, i played around with sync in both directions and thought, it is funny enough to create a video. I hope, you like it.

Make your own MIDItriggs for the CR-78 with this: http://www.mik-music.org/MIDItriggs"