Success Cases

favolaschia · November 28, 2019, 12:16am

I don’t have any nice photos yet (it looks exactly like it does on the web site anyway), but I do have a success case. I got the V3 Kit last week and built it in about an hour. I’ve been playing around with it since mostly controlling it through my Korg Electribe 2 Sampler or Zaquencer. The sound and diversity of synths, the hardware-like controls, and everything about it is very impressive. I’m having a ton of fun with it. There are a bunch of patches that make great starting places for drones and other parts of the kind of music I like to make.

If I can suggest a couple of additions based on my week’s experience. I’d love to see Amsynth (https://amsynth.github.io/) added as a synth engine. It’s a really easy to use subtractive synthesis engine. It has a ton of presets/patches, and is really easy to edit and write new patches. The control configuration seems like it would be pretty easy to adapt to the Zynthian too. The other addition I’d like to recommend is Giada (https://www.giadamusic.com/). I use a bunch of long samples in the music I’m making and it’s a great sample player/looper that I run on my laptop. It would be nice to have that built into the Zynthian too.

Anyway, even without these additions, the Zynthian is great and I’m looking forward to working with it for a long time.

Cheers,

Jim

wyleu · November 28, 2019, 7:51am

That must generate a considerable sense of achievement! I particularly like the idea of re purposing keyboards like this as so much good stuff comes for free. In such circumstances it’s always nice to hear both how other people describe what you’ve done and the surprise that it can be done as well! It’s really nice to hear people explaining it on your behalf, and althou’ we all know that the praise of our closest partner is normally wrapped in several qualifiers, I suspect that your wife’s reaction would be very telling!!
Mind you Mrs Wyleu’s reactions would probably start with

1/ Why do we have to have that in the lounge ?
2/ Why did it take so long?

But then Mrs wyleu’s first reaction to music encountered in virtually any form is to turn it down, and glare at me…

Well Done!!

wyleu · November 28, 2019, 7:53am

Well Done , so open wide, say Rrrrrrrr and swallow this . . . …

wolfpaw98 · November 28, 2019, 2:25pm

My fortune is that my wife is a musician so she is generally supportive and sometimes even brings me things like the old P-60 to fix. But point 2 is well appreciated.

riban · November 28, 2019, 4:34pm

I still have a synth, piano and digital piano (not working) in my living room and am frequently reminded that I cannot add to this collection. I need to put a Zynth inside the broken digital piano to make it useful. Similar story as @wolfpaw98 in that I got it gifted me and have managed to get MIDI working (by replacing the motherboard with a new self-programmed microprocessor).

Image: Before I started to fix it.

(I just dug out this picture and realised that it was taken in March 2018 so it has been 20 months - surely not too long?) My amp and speakers still work and there is much space so I should be able to fit this in. All I need is time. Anyone got any spare??? Maybe another project for Christmas break.

jofemodo · December 2, 2019, 11:37am

11 posts were split to a new topic: New Synth Engine: AMSynth

smiths73v3 · December 7, 2019, 6:19pm

Road Worthy Zynth Done! (as much as any project could be.)
Custom DIY Zynth USB only, custom MCP_23017 circuit board, 7" official Pi Touch, RPi4. HiFi Berry DAC+. All items procured from Amazon…
Obligitory sound sample (Zynth only, 2 instruments one per keyboard controller)

Here it is in action at a practic session in the warehouse:

Studio style layout.

Side View with connectors: ELC, 1/4" Stereo out, 2x USB3, SD-Slot

Front Panel

Just in case, SD card access

Backside of front panel guts while building/experimenting:

Buttoned up case, ready to load-in for a gig.

Thanks to the Zynthian team for a great project!

Jtunes · December 7, 2019, 8:02pm

My personal favorite feature on that thing is the power switch on the side. Very cool machine, @smiths73v3! Congrats!

Humi · December 7, 2019, 10:37pm

Great job.

Love the case.

hal80 · December 14, 2019, 11:00am

Hi, I just upgraded my V2-Kit to the latest raspberry Pi 4 B. Here is some report / pictures.

The performance of pianoteq is now so much better! After playing a while, cpu temperature rises to max. 65 °C ($ vcgencmd measure_temp).

The new image https://os.zynthian.org/ for Raspberry Pi 4B was taken from here, https://os.zynthian.org/2019-09-24-zynthianos-buster-lite-1.0.0-RC1.zip
Controllers didn’t work right away, because the default setting is Kit V3 instead of Kit V2.
After changing the setting via webconf tool to Kit V2, controllers still didn’t work, but a software update (triggered from zynthian menu) made them work.

Along with upgrading from Pi3B+ to Pi4B, I made some other changes:

modified the case to accomodate the different hdmi, power and usb / ethernet connections
added coaxial power connector
made wooden side elements and aluminum stand to give a more convenient viewing angle

One technical flaw resulting in undervoltage sign and a lot of clicks and glitches while playing pianoteq on raspberry pi 3 B+ was the poor power supply connection via micro USB. The power supply itself was capable of 3 Amperes, so that was fine. I soldered two wires to the respective “Test Pins” on the bottom of the raspberry Pi3B+. Now, power supply is very reliable, no undervoltage and not prone to mechanically loose contacts when touching the connector as it was the case for the micro USB power cable.

As that was very reliable, I made the same for the raspberry Pi4B, see following picture.

In my case, white cable is GND and brown cable is +5V. The other end of the cable goes to the coaxial power connector which you see in the aluminum case next to the original usb power connector. (Note: both connectors can still be used, but don’t power them at the same time as this could result in damaging your raspberry.)

The +5V Pins are labeled TP1, TP2 and TP3 on the board. You can chose any of them.
The GND-Pins are labeled TP7, TP8, TP9, TP12. Again, any of them is fine.

Here I compiled the information:

As for the case, though the original one is already very appealing, I thouhgt i looks a little bit ‘naked’, so I added two side panels and engraved them with the zynthian logo.

The attentive observer will notice that I accidently introduced a Pi phase shift in the right logo

There are no further mechanical modification needed for the original aluminum case. The case is held in place via the four screws on each side which kind of snap in to the respective dents in the wood.
The two wooden side panels are in turn held together by the aluminum plate.

Just an idea, some holes could be drilled into the bottom plates and a fan could be installed under the plate.

regards,
hal

wyleu · December 14, 2019, 12:21pm

Excellent work!!!
I have frequently looked at USB-C connectors and thought, 3 Amps yeah right!. It’s nice to have this confirmed or perhaps my prejudices tuned, either way I suspect you have implemented a hardware mod that will be copied by many of this slavishly devoted crew! I hereby christen it the hal mod!

You used a coaxial connector, I’ve found them pullout-able in a number of cases but the same is probably true for the Type C, so debate can rage! Would a decent steering diode in the coax line address the two power sources issue, or might the volts drop negate it ?

The Side panels are rather gorgeous! as the idea developed when did you realise you needed a hole for the usb, or did you start your thinking from there?
I don’t know if there’s any spec for space needed around a USB/Ethernet connector but I reckon it probably makes it easier to do simply by touch in the dark so that’s probably another win.
I’ve been looking a lot at display angle, and going back to the start of it all, the Mini moog model D made it a feature! when you see some of the suggested plastic cases they were going to wrap around it all, you have to admire the technical simplicity of the answer. So you’ve now got it adjustable by re-rendering ( is that a thing yet?) the mdf components, What kind of machine cut those out for you? I can’t look at and not think jigsaw, but that’s my age!

So congratulations it’s a thing of great beauty!

But there is, sadly, one outstanding issue. . .
After a cursory glance throu’ the dusty tomes in which we keep such ephemera, and ignoring your multiple false hits in the Van Halen Jump sample debacle, It appears that at no point have you uploaded any musical content .

I will of course, as is customary, hand you the scroll

Lovely piece of work!

hal80 · December 14, 2019, 7:54pm

Hi,

glad that you like it
Zynthian is such a cool project so it’s really fun to devote some time to it.

I also thought about a diode in the coax line but the lowest voltage drop is usually around 0.5 V, so that might be too much already.

It could be that the usb-c port provides a more reliable power-connection than the micro-usb on the old raspberry. I haven’t tried it out yet. Since I had already installed the DC socket, I continued to use it with the current rpi4.
By the way, there are also plugs with a safety nut:

lockplug

The hole in the side panel was considered right from the beginning. True, there needs to be some space around the plugs. I find all my USB-cables fitting, but on the other hand, it’s not that easy to pull out e.g. the wireless receiver for the keypad or to unlock the ethernet cable.

Your guess is right , I made the panels using a jigsaw and I further processed it with a wood file and sandpaper. That would be an easy job for a wood cnc machine. For me, it took literally hours.

An audio contribution will follow very soon, promised
regards, hal

Wilhelm · December 22, 2019, 2:21pm

My 19" Rack 1st try. Its ABS.

dhrupadia_dad · January 9, 2020, 4:49pm

So I finally made my case - with mains PSU, silent 80mm fan to keep Pi4 cool and AudioInject Zero. If somebody likes it I have all .dxf files and shall gladly share (but no support whatsoever!!!).

dhrupadia_dad · January 9, 2020, 5:05pm

And for sound examples - let me get used to it and I will upload the example(s) in due course.

Jtunes · January 9, 2020, 5:08pm

If anyone else thinks Zynthian looks fantastic in orange and black, raise your hand!
Great job, @dhrupadia_dad!

wyleu · January 9, 2020, 5:59pm

jofemodo · January 9, 2020, 8:43pm

jofemodo · January 9, 2020, 9:23pm

Hi @dhrupadia_dad!

The best way to share while keeping your authorship & merit is making a github pull request to the zynthian-case repo:

Fork the zynthian-case repo
Add your folders/files
Make a Pull Request

If you don’t want to follow this procedure, you can send me the files and i will do it for you, including an AUTHOR file inside the subfolder. But … i really prefer the first method

Thanks a lot for sharing!!

sm7x7 · January 9, 2020, 9:24pm

Nobody wants to try to make a hybrid case for the Zynthian together with the mini keys keyboard controller?
The best candidate for the keyboard I see the Midiplus Mini X series (I personally owe three of them - X2, X3 and X6). And it’s my dream to have it together with the Zynthian in one case… Black-orange of course