Digital DIY?

[lava]

Hi,

I'm new here. I'm about halfway through the EE program at San Francisco State University, so I have a solid electronics base.

I am considering attempting to build a digital stompbox of some kind for my final graduation project. My program is somewhat digital-centric, so I believe a digital project would be more applicable in the eyes of my advisors.

The majority of projects I see on this forum appear to be analog - is digital DIY much more difficult? What kind of digital effect would be the easiest to build for a first-time DIY'er with my background?

Thanks!

[sir_modulus]

Try A simple digital delay...that might be something on the easier side. I believe tonepad's Rebote 2 dealay is digital.

Cheers,

Nish

[Peter Snowberg]

Welcome to the forum lava.

Another S.F. stompboxer! That makes a good handfull. (I'm in Sausalito)

As you've seen there is much more available in the analog world. Digital DIY is just starting to happen thanks to availability of parts.

I've been working forever (or so it seems) on a DIY DSP pedal. After several false starts I think things are finally close to happening. If that sounds like what you're after, keep watching this forum for announcements. The DSPs are from http://www.wavefrontsemi.com

I'll be ordering the first PCBs in 2-3 weeks (if the PCB gods are happy).

If you want another digital project, I assume the course requires you to deal with the signal in the digital domain and that eliminates projects where the digital is concealed inside a chip. There are some digital delay designs around that use sigma-delta modulation and regular DRAM for storage. The address generation is done with micky-mouse logic. Perhaps an option?

[loscha]

digital DIY ...
I agree with above comment, a clean digital delay would be quite easy to make, but, does the deleopment environment you are planning on using allow you to impliment complex algorithms?
as you would possibly know,  to make a good sounding digital delay, it is desireable to have some lowpass filtering between loops.

but, with a DSP, and a meg of RAM or two, the world is your oyster!!!

hope to hear about it, and see progress, and, more importantly, hear it!

best of luck from a fellow digital hacker

[Mark Hammer]

RG Keen has raised the virtues of PICs here a few times, noting their interesting, cost-effective, and unique capabilities as sources of alternate waveforms.  He has also proposed assorted PIC-based effects control-systems.  There are a few (well, one at least) papers at his www.geofex.com site on this.  If you search through the archives here, a lot of discussion in the area uses the acronym ASMOP to refer to PIC-based projects as "a simple matter of programming".

I would encourage almost anyone pursuing EE these days to get acquainted with PICs, ATMELs, and the like.  A ridiculously cheap and convenient way to become an enterpreneur.

I, for one, would love to see a microcontroller-based board that provides an intelligent envelope-follower/pitch-tracker.  Do you have any idea how many friends you would make here if you could sell them a $25 mono guitar-to-MIDI interface?