Pre-built MidiPal?

phillwilson

Hi all,

I am so close to clicking that final click on a Midipal kit, but I am to be honest clueless to soldering and such and dont fancy frying £75 worth of kit.

I noticed on the site it says

"An assembled version is coming soon!"

would anyone hazzard a guess when that might be?

I need mine in time for christmas, is this a realistic expectation that I should hold on and wait for (a fully assembled version) .....or is this more a "one day" idea and I will need ot get on and start finding osmeone to build a kit version for me?

thanks

Phill

fcd72

Maybe you can find someone in the UK who is willing to assemble it for you?

pichenettes

6 weeks for the manufacturing of LCDs (order placed).
4 weeks for the assembly/manufacturing of the boards (contract set up).
Meanwhile, I have to set things up with the manufacturer for the cases, hopefully within 2 months it’ll be done.

Mid-february?

pehrlich

Any news on the prebuilt midipals?

pichenettes

Parts purchased, manufacturer paid, parts delivered, manufacturing job in the queue. Test run of 6 units due for february 15th (it got advanced by 1 week from the screenshot above). If they are good, the remaining 244 due for second week of march.

fcd72

Im gettin frightened ;-)

pehrlich

so good!

toneburst

Excellent!

a|x

zetam

I wait for it.
I'm very interested.
Marco

pehrlich

will the test run units be available for sale once verified?

Pete

pichenettes

Yes, but only with the clear acrylic case.

bleo

!!!! vs. WHAT??? Hot pink flame maple veneer cases with ebony inlays for the full run??

pehrlich

clear sounds good to me

pehrlich

Can anybody in the know give me the specs on a power supply for the Midipal?
I'm on the hunt for a non wall wart one...all the ones I have lying around
are old and stinky.

Pete

pichenettes

7.5V or 9V. Sourcing at least 75mA.

pehrlich

cool thanks for the info
Midipal here I come!

pehrlich

2.1mm connector?

pichenettes

Yes, 2.1mm connector.

pehrlich

thank you for the reply

Pete

pehrlich

how do the midipals look? are they still on schedule?

Pete

zetam

I'm interested too, any news on the assembled midipals?
M

pichenettes

When they’ll be news be sure I’ll post there.

zetam

Sure. Thank you. M

pichenettes

The factory has finally done the PCBs, they will do the assembly in the next week, and they trained a guy to do the flashing/testing, he practiced successfully on a built unit I have sent, things are moving on this front.

On the cases front things did not run smoothly – last time I heard from the manufacturer it was “prototypes will be ready in 3 weeks” and now it’s “nothing happened, we haven’t received any formal purchase order from you”. And a lesson on “you don’t know how to do things and run a business”. Grrrrr. Don’t know if this is because they are big or French. Maybe both. Never saw something like that happening when purchasing stuff in Asia, the US, or Germany… So it’ll be likely that the first run will have the same acrylic cases as the kits.

fcd72

Autsch.

loderbast

nice news!

acrylic case is fine with me.

maybe someday you will have fcd72 as a full time mutable employee to do all the cases. he might not even need training, to also do testing and flashing, too.

fcd72

Im somehow not made to be an employee (in fact i never wrote an application for a job…) but if i was Mutable Instruments would be the place to be. And you are totally wrong, i need severe training flashing and testing things, i’m not capable of anything and i am not good at that. Hence i am self-employed ;-)

loderbast

it is nice, you never had to write a application. congrats!
i think beeing self employed and working on something that is not only a product or service, but also a piece of art (like diy synth stuff for example) is the one of the few possibilities of not beeing estranged from work in modern society. i think pichenettes has this privilege since he does mutable instruments full time and i hope you have it, too with what you are doing.

(sorry for derailing the thread)

Jojjelito

Erm, the master of laser cutting beautiful plexi cases claiming to be unqualified… Pah!

Strange that the big enclosure company was less helpful. Then again, I can hide behind a mega-corp at work so I usually don’t get toyed with.
Glad to see them MIDIpals coming!

fcd72

I’m only a qualified Derailer – see?

Jojjelito

I could solder an SMD MidiPal myself, but there’s plenty of that to go around@work.

Anticipation building…

pichenettes

Factory has confirmed 10 MIDIpals have been built and the flashing/test procedure has been successfully completed on them. They will be shipped to me tomorrow. Can’t wait to see the boards! Once I OK them, more will be built.

pehrlich

awesome, I've been checking in everyday!

Pete

herrprof

Do you have an plans to sell a prebuilt midipal xl with the knobs? Or at least enclosures?

pichenettes

What’s a MIDIpal XL? Looks like you’re moving faster than I do on the product development front :D

herrprof

Heh I was just renaming it in my head... dont think im presumptuous!

I was trying to save feature requests but was wondering if:

You'd sell a version with knobs
Would it be possible ... for the knob mode to have knobs settable per channel
... for the modes to be selectable via program change or cc as well as sysex

Does it pass through data on non active channels (meaning channels that aren't being processed by a program or rule)?

I like to stick it in the middle of my 4 x merge -> 4 Thru Boxes, so I can shape the midi stream with the various programs from song to song.

I have three midi control devices, a guitar controller stuck on ch1, and two sequencers that can sequence forever, so im hoping the midipal can make things a little more flexible on the guitar controller, and play nice with the sequences in the middle. If not I can easily stick in somewhere else in the chain.

herrprof

Oh yea and:

Transpose for the midi splitter.

pichenettes

A version with knobs? I don’t really plan it. I’ll leave this as a DIY + firmware modding exercise…
The MIDIpal passes through data from the channels it is not processing.
The modes are selectable by SysEx ; not by program change or CC – the goal is to make the unit as “transparent” as possible to MIDI data. If you see an elegant way to handle this let me know… But I think most people would be surprised if they send a CC or program changes from their synth and the unit starts reacting in funny ways. SysEx is the only way of making sure the change message doesn’t get confused with anything else.
You can build a MIDI splitter + transposer using the custom filtering mode.

herrprof

1,2: Thanks for this info! I'm sold.
3: My timefactor has a device control channel and timefactor receive channel, so you can use it as receive device and as a midi controller for other things. I think having a control channel for the midipal that is user configurable shouldn't be that confusing, especially for the uberproud mutable elite. Heck, the timefactor is for guitar neanderthals, and they get on ok! :D
4: Oh duh, makes sense!

pehrlich

any news on first prebuilts?

pichenettes

pichenettes

will inspect, test and report.

fcd72

Looks suspiciously like a MidiPal….

pehrlich

holy cow! beautiful

oootini

i wish my midipal had a tested sticker on it. ;)

rumpelfilter

yes! Great news!

pehrlich

can you post a picture of the power supply you are using?
I would like to see if I already have one or if I need to order something

min_phase

You're going to send out a general mail to the list announcing availability? I can't keep checking the store every 6 hours. It's killing my love life.

fcd72

@min_phase
they will be all gone in 6h, so check more frequently ;-)

pehrlich

love life...what's that?

fcd72

Thats what you do to your Shruthi . . .

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