What I have been up to lately.

[dmitri]

http://www.megadrum.info/content/what-i ... een-lately

[rockdude]

Looks impressive dmitri! My soon to arrive MegaDrum kit suddenly feels a lot easier to build in comparison. Thank you for showing us the future

[jman 31]

Nice! Very impressive Dmitri. I wish I had the knowledge it takes to design something like this! The only part that scares me is soldering the ARM chip. Those are some tiny leads! Did you solder those or use a hot plate?

[kurtus420]

This is very inovative , can you tell us in any way when atmega644 will be maxed or how much more capacity an atmega644 has left right now if at all possible? Thanks, Kurt.

[dmitri]

Atmega644 is far from being maxed out for foreseeable future.

[kurtus420]

SWEET!! I was sort of scared that I was going to have to build another one(more scared of the wife than anything). This is great and one day....................quite a long ways away, I may jump on the band wagon, how much more data is the new mcu going to give as far as data saving for maps and configs etc. Thanks, Kurt.

Atmega644 is far from being maxed out for foreseeable future.

[jmcdougall]

Dimitri
There are a few vendors that have a packaged ARM processor that is suitable for a DIY environment. Here in the US, http://www.coridiumcorp.com/Products.php is one of them. I have two of these, the ArmExpress and the ArmExpress Lite, that I have been working with to re-brain a late 1970's automatic film processor. It used a 6802 and the processing steps were prom'd. The processing timing changed with new versions of C41 and E6 film processing and the software company that wrote the firmware disappeared in the early eighties. I have been building a daughterboard with the core support chips and then using ribbon cable and dip headers to plug into the chip sockets for the old chips to utilize most of the existing control i/o. One of the nice things is I2C support so I can use a Matrix Orbital LCD (http://www.matrixorbital.com/) A number of these displays also have a built in interface for a 4x5 keypad array as well as 6 digital outs so two lines running Ic2 provide a 4 x 20 char display, a 20 key keypad and 6 led drivers. The 4 line displays have gotten pricey over the past year but they now also make much cheaper 2 line versions

[dmitri]

Not the primary but nevertheless a very important goal of the MegaDrum project is to keep it low cost and simple for even a first time DIYer. Until it is possible to add new features with Atmega without going beyond its limits I'm going to stick with it for the sake of a wider community.

[Ken Forgettable]

Dimitri
There are a few vendors that have a packaged ARM processor that is suitable for a DIY environment.

FYI Olimex are good and cheap too.

[Pete Predictable]

Did you choose this for the DMA?