korginc / nts-1-customizations

Official repository for hardware customizations of the Nu:Tekt NTS-1 digital kit
BSD 3-Clause "New" or "Revised" License
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A Simple Introduction Please #2

Open scotus-49 opened 4 years ago

scotus-49 commented 4 years ago

Do you have anywhere information for the average Arduino user to get started with customizing the NTS-1? Something using readily available components for simple experiments? Your examples seem to assume a high professional level of soldering and programming.

Has anyone outside of Korg actually done this? I can at present find no sign on the internet of anyone managing to do any hardware customization. It"s a great idea, but how does the average person get started?

samjkent commented 4 years ago

I've not used it but had a browse of the source as it sounded cool (I've not got an NTS-1, and have no affiliation with Korg or this project)

To communicate in an Arduino environment you can use this library from the examples folder, which abstracts the communication layer to some nice functions and events [1]

It looks like the comms layer (using SPI) is only implemented for STM32 at the moment, so incompatible with a traditional atmega arduino (uno, mega etc.), STM32duino / platform.io are probably the simplest ways to get started

If you wanted to use an official Arduino, the interface header file is fairly generic [2] , so you'd need to implement nts1_iface.c setting up SPI using Arduino abstractions / whatever processor is on your dev board

[1] https://github.com/korginc/nts-1-customizations/tree/master/Custom_Panel_RevC/Arduino/libraries/NTS-1

[2] https://github.com/korginc/nts-1-customizations/blob/master/Custom_Panel_RevC/Arduino/variants/NTS1_REF_CP_REVC/nts1_iface.

[3] https://github.com/korginc/nts-1-customizations/blob/master/Custom_Panel_RevC/Arduino/variants/NTS1_REF_CP_REVC/nts1_iface.c

scotus-49 commented 4 years ago

@samjkent Thanks for the info. I had not dug so deep into the Korg information, and had not come across this. I am based in Berlin, Germany, where none of my local maker suppliers (ie Conrad) have SMT32 boards, but traditional arduinos are available over the counter. I will have a look into the code to see whether I can do something with it. I also have no connection with Korg, but I thought I had heard (unconfirmed) that they had started a firm here in Berlin to do with their Nu:Tekt range of products. The NTS-1 is quite fun to play with and program, and seems an ideal match for the arduino range of micro-controllers to extend its' functions. I usually code in Python, but I'll give this a try.

eudes commented 4 years ago

Hey @scotus-49,

I'm working on understanding the STM32 library provided here and possibly building one for the ESP32. I'm also documenting the analysis, which might help you out a bit. It's not yet complete and I don't have any working code, but I go quite a bit into detail about how this code works. I also plan on updating it frequently over the next few days as I progress.

Here's the repo: https://github.com/eudes/korg-nts1-esp32