Midi and Event V3

[Locksmith]

Last week, a couple of media students came and proposed their idea for a project to use sensors fitted to drums, sent through a pc and outputting midi signals to our lighting desk to control the stage lights. They got my interest because I had thought of a similar thing last year but never got round to doing anything about it.

 

I dumped our LeapFrog and replaced it with our Event v3 which can handle midi and everything worked fine. The only problem was that this was all set up in our lighting booth because the midi cable is only 1m long.

 

My proposed solution to this is to make a pair of cables with a midi (din) plug on one end and two XLR plugs on the other and to run the whole thing through our multicore from stage to desk.

 

Can anyone tell me if this is likely to work as the multicore will also be carrying the main PA feed from FoH to Amps, or are we going to get interference.

 

Also can anyone tell me if I need to wire the synchro pins (1 & 3) in the din plug or can we get away with just the midi pins (4 & 5) and the shield (pin 2).

 

Thanks in advance.

[paulears]

midi doesn't use pins 3 and 1 at all. din to XLRs work, but a lot depend on the cable length and type - midi working at its limit is awful, random notes, stuck on notes - general wierd behaviour. bit like dodgy DMX.

[Freddie]

Seconded on the crazy behaviour. Ever knocked a plug out of a synth when it's playing summat? You quite often end up with a note of infinite length (and if you're me, always eardrum-poppingly-high-frequency)

[Locksmith]

Fortunately, everything seems to work fine, so far, and is only being used for a demonstration of the idea as part of their project. We have yet to test the Din/XLR cables I made last night.

I'll let you know how things go.

(I'm not sure how the thing will cope with switching at the speed of the drummer. I think they'll have to drum slowly otherwise the parcans will just appear to be on all the time.

[Locksmith]

The system was tested this afternoon and worked quite well. There were a few teething troubles, (a sensor fell off a drum and one needed re-soldering) otherwise all went well and provided a good demonstration of the theory.

The lecturer seemed quite impressed and discussed the possibility of further projects of a similar type and asked if the equipment would be available for future tests.

I would say that the tests were successful and that further development of the idea may even lead to a commercial product. (even if it is for a quite limited market).