**The DIYStompboxes 10-Year Anniversary Contest Thread**

[~arph]

We lost a week's worth of posts when the forum crashed.

great, that surrounds my entry with even more mystery.

Has anyone else read Pynchon's Mason and Dixon? We've all lived a week that never existed.

No, but I know a good song about it featuring a certain mr. Taylor.

[Dave W]

[~arph]

This:

[midwayfair]

Hey, folks, this is the "30 days until the contest starts" bump. I hope everyone's already dreaming up their entries (I've heard rumbles of some amazing things from some participants!), and maybe a few more people will throw down a gauntlet ... ? I think this is going to be an excellent contest, and I for one would be super excited about the pool of prizes. Here's the most recent prize pool (this includes Jdansti's prize, which he posted about in the week of lost prizes).

Parts!

• $50 in store credit from Smallbear Electronics (www.smallbearelec.com)
• $25 in store credit from Pedal Parts Plus (www.pedalpartsplus.com)

PCBs:

• Various PCBs courtesy of the judges (and/or other donors), including some original designs and rarities!
• 1776 Effects PCB prize pack
• Cardinal Tremolo kit, with the 1776 PCB and all parts necessary to build it -- courtesy of Jdansti.
  

Completed effects and enclosures:

• A handpainted enclosure with custom art (courtesy of MidwayFair)
• HaveYouSeenHim has offered a JFET matcher as a prize (picture here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9878279/JFET%20tester%20haveyouseenhim.jpeg)
• An FY-2 (Companion Fuzz), board built by Mark Hammer with a laser etched enclosure by Pickdropper
• Complete Mutron V build by Mustachio -- just like the one that won the Turkey Day Competition!

[Thanks as always to the generous support of the community and retailers for providing prizes.]

A post with the rules and any clarifications will be posted at the end of the month to make sure everyone has the most up-to-date information before the contest officially starts. There have been no changes so far, just a few clarifications.

[~arph]

I'm waiting for the basic audio pedal prize.. 

[midwayfair]

I'm waiting for the basic audio pedal prize.. 

I love John's work, and that would be a fabulous price, but I feel like it would be a pretty big ask, and the prize pool is absolutely stuffed for the number of contestants.

[cloudscapes]

Tentatively throwing in my towel.

I know there are two months left, but it takes one month to order and receive a PCB, which means I have to start designing it in just a couple weeks, and I'm nowhere even close to having all the features ready. 

[midwayfair]

Tentatively throwing in my towel.

I know there are two months left, but it takes one month to order and receive a PCB, which means I have to start designing it in just a couple weeks, and I'm nowhere even close to having all the features ready. 

If it helps, I got my last Osh Park order in about a week and a half.

[cloudscapes]

Tentatively throwing in my towel.

I know there are two months left, but it takes one month to order and receive a PCB, which means I have to start designing it in just a couple weeks, and I'm nowhere even close to having all the features ready. 

If it helps, I got my last Osh Park order in about a week and a half.

Yeah, OSH park might be my only resort. I'm still gonna try, which is why I used "tentatively", but it also looks like I'm gonna be busy for a few weeks. we'll see!

I could *theoretically* try and finish the hardware right away, and then do most of the firmware while I wait for PCBs, but that's always risky. uugghh

[samhay]

Tentatively throwing in my towel.

I know there are two months left, but it takes one month to order and receive a PCB, which means I have to start designing it in just a couple weeks, and I'm nowhere even close to having all the features ready. 

Seeing as Jon is running the comp, why not follow his lead and build on perf!

[Ronan]

I need another 10% effort here on the pcb, and a box big enough to put it in. 50/50 chance it'll make the starting line, but I did want to build one of these for a long time.

[cloudscapes]

Seeing as Jon is running the comp, why not follow his lead and build on perf!

0.4mm SMD pitch on perf?  I'm not that insane, unfortunately.

and before you mention it, I'm not using fine pitch smd because I want to, but because the parts I need are only available like that. 

it's fine. I'd rather build the effect I want as closely as I can and miss a contest, rather than compromise the effect or choose a simpler one.

[samhay]

Fair enough - I take it that Walt's hanging bug style of SMD is an option?. http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=103314.0

There are a few PICs I am dying to play with that will eventually force me down the SMD/blindness route. Care to share what you intend(ed) to use?

[cloudscapes]

Fair enough - I take it that Walt's hanging bug style of SMD is an option?. http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=103314.0

There are a few PICs I am dying to play with that will eventually force me down the SMD/blindness route. Care to share what you intend(ed) to use?

PIC32, the P32MX575F256H specifically. The effect is mostly DSP so something beefier than an 8bit PIC or AVR was needed, and that kind of horsepower doesn't really come in DIP. They do make PIC32 in DIPs but with about half the power. I need all of it.



I don't feel like dead-bugging more than half the pins on this. 

[samhay]

yeah, those chips have definitely piqued my interest too - the ability to do on-the-fly FFT/IFFTs pretty much means that the sky is the limit. Well, the sky and ones ability to work with 0.4 mm pitches.

[cloudscapes]

yeah, those chips have definitely piqued my interest too - the ability to do on-the-fly FFT/IFFTs pretty much means that the sky is the limit. Well, the sky and ones ability to work with 0.4 mm pitches.

Fine pitch is pretty easy once you use solder masks. apply flux. melt an entire row of fine solder with one swipe. suck up the excess with wick. inspect with $10 eye magnifier thing.

Harder is designing the PCB layout. old rules don't apply as much, and there are new rules when you deal with high speed micros. double sided board is absolutelly necissary since you need a ground plane, and you need to keep under the chip as free from traces as you can to allow inductance wizardry to happen, or something. also, lots and lots of vias and decoupling caps.

There exist PIC32's in DIP which operate at half frequency, mightr be an option if you want to skip the layout trickiness.

http://nearworlds.org/stuff/pic32_caps_v3.jpg
like here's a layout I had done (the PIC32 is on the other side of roughly the center) which didn't work well. the pic was unstable and glitchy because I later learned that the ground plane was all cut up and cluttered right under the chip. so I moved stuff away from the chip to give it breathing room, and used a lot of vias to keep traces under it to a minimum, and to make the ground plane "one piece".
http://nearworlds.org/stuff/pic32_caps_v4.jpg

Otherwise yeah, they're pretty cool. It's not a dedicated DSP though, so even a "slower" real DSP like the FV-1 might perform better for some things. but the pic hdoes have DSP features and does them alright. and for raw general horsepower they're pretty nice too! I'm sampling audio at 96khz and performing a whole bunch of multiplication and division on 32bit integers per-sample and it isn't even breaking a sweat. most of the sample time I'm wasting is the slow clock of the external ADC I'm using, but that's hardly the micro's fault.

[samhay]

Thanks - food for thought, and it's cool to see other people around here playing with these things.

[Striker Amplification]

you guys ever use 12au6 sub mini pentode valves as preamps, its certainly different

[psychedelicfish]

Firstly:
How will the prizes be awarded? Entrant with the most points gets first pick, next highest second pick etc? Randomly? Based on monetary value?
Secondly:
Can I donate my entry as a prize? I can promise that it will be very cool and certainly desirable for many, but my playing style doesn't suit the pedal. I don't want to tell you, because it would ruin the surprise...

[midwayfair]

Firstly:
How will the prizes be awarded? Entrant with the most points gets first pick, next highest second pick etc?

That's it.

We're pretty set on prizes at the moment  -- in fact, we have a couple in reserve. However, you may wish to donate it to a future contest. It's very generous of you to offer, however.