Musical PIC project for PIC beginner?

[Mark Abbott]

I will have to get familar with PIC's prior to starting a project for TAFE (college.)

What projects do you guys recommend for the beginner?

(I have been curious about the whole MIDI thing and how to use it in a meanful way.)

Thanks for your help.

Yours Sincerely

Mark Abbott

[The Tone God]

What projects do you guys recommend for the beginner?

If you have no background in uC yet then I think the same ideas stick as with learn anything new programming lanuage. Start with a "Hello World!" program. Making an LED blink off of one the uC pins is good for that. Then try using the other pins as outputs driving LED(s). Then try handling input data like a switch input that controls a LED output. Then just play around with various combinations of inputs and output functions to get used to handling input and output data.

I suppose you could try an organ of some sort to ramp things up. Jumping right into MIDI is a bit much for starting.

Andrew

[BubbaKahuna]

I'm doing my first PIC project right now, so it's very much a learning experience for me.
It's the Manolator serial~DMX controller using a PIC16F88 and a SN75176 serial controller chip.
It's easier to build than any stompbox and you can get the hex code to check out how it works - all open source.
This is a far cry from designing anything, but I gotta learn to crawl before I sign up for a marathon. 

Check it out at manolator.com

Cheers,
- JJ

[multrak]

Mark,
   I've been using dspic30f and dspic33f for a while now doing sound affects. I have coded JAVA for some MIDI effects (arpeggio & echo)on my PC a few years ago but using the dspic for analog processing now. I posted a flanger affect with code to this forum a few weeks ago - it uses the A to D converter onboard (DSPic30F4011) and a r2r ladder for D to A. This was not a difficult project. The chip I'm using now, DSPic33fj256gp710, has a 12 bit a/d converter with a 1Ms/s conversion rate. The processor runs @ 160 MHz, 40 MIPS and has DSP instruction set, along with general uP instructions. It also has a codec interface. I bought it as a plug-in module for a developemient board which I don't have, now I've been trying to mount the module on a circuit board but the 100 pin header has pins spaced at .05", which is making it difficult. (anybody know where I can get header / connector at this spacing?) I've been looking for people to collaborate with, was thinking about building a multi-effects project using this chip. I play guitar, piano and sing, record multitrack (hence, "multrak") on a fostex and my PC, using cakewalk and others. I'm really looking to create unique sounds and recording techniques. Please feel free to ask me anything or especialy, tell me something. I'm hoping to come up with something good so I can post it and impress somebody 8>).   Pat

[RaceDriver205]

Where do you get such a chip? 160Mhz!

[johngreene]

Where do you get such a chip? 160Mhz!

Microchip.
http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/DeviceDoc/70165E.pdf
This is a pretty common technique with processors today in that the oscillator is run at a much lower frequency (10MHz) using a crystal and an internall PLL is used to spool it up to 160 MHz. FPGAs can have internal clock frequencies is excess of 1 GHz. They do tend to consume a bit of power though....

--john