After seeing the FCBInfinity hack (which looks awesome!) I was inspired to do some hacking of my own. I have an FCB1010 controller for my AxeFX II and it works OK w/no mods or chips, but I was thinking I could make things better. So last night I hacked up a proof of concept with a Raspberry Pi (Raspberry Pi | An ARM GNU/Linux box for $25. Take a byte!) acting as a midi translator type thing. I plugged the fcb into the pi using a usb-midi cable, and the axe-fx into the pi with a usb-midi cable, then wrote a Ruby script to accept midi calls from the FCB and send entirely different calls to the AxeFX. It worked perfectly as a proof of concept, so I ordered several LCD displays and the electronics parts to build a box.
Here's my plan:
Build a plastic enclosure to house the Pi and midi ports with a 20x4 LCD screen. Use the AxeFX midi-in to read and display current patch, tuner, etc on the LCD. I'm thinking of putting a Mic stand adapter on this so it will be closer to face-height.
Build a custom Ruby program to accept foot switch midi events from the FCB, then translate them into AxeFX changes as required. For example, program FCB to send PC01 for foot switch 1, but on the Axe, use it to change scenes. With a custom script, I'll have 10 banks times 10 pedals for options. The first bank can be a "gig" mode, with a Preset UP, Preset DOWN switch plus 8 scenes. I haven't thought through how to do the custom programming yet, but at least I proved it will work.
Anybody tried anything similar and have advice before I go getting my soldering iron out?
BK
Here's my plan:
Build a plastic enclosure to house the Pi and midi ports with a 20x4 LCD screen. Use the AxeFX midi-in to read and display current patch, tuner, etc on the LCD. I'm thinking of putting a Mic stand adapter on this so it will be closer to face-height.
Build a custom Ruby program to accept foot switch midi events from the FCB, then translate them into AxeFX changes as required. For example, program FCB to send PC01 for foot switch 1, but on the Axe, use it to change scenes. With a custom script, I'll have 10 banks times 10 pedals for options. The first bank can be a "gig" mode, with a Preset UP, Preset DOWN switch plus 8 scenes. I haven't thought through how to do the custom programming yet, but at least I proved it will work.
Anybody tried anything similar and have advice before I go getting my soldering iron out?
BK
