i wanted to integrate the outputs from the keystep pro into my eurorack setup with a custom patch bay PCB files and CAD parts are in the eurorack case repo: github.com/Bli...
For folks curious about the milling, ideally we wanted to use a single end mill to avoid tool changes with our bantamtools pcb mill. Only mishap we had was I went too deep on the outline cutout and scuffed the surface of the spoil board - not a big deal but good reminder to account for different tape thickness 😅 This turned out great and happy to help out!
Very cool! I got halfway through DIYing a patchbay for my Beatstep Pro using HDMI but it was a real nightmare. Your solution is way more elegant and I love the LEDs!
lol as fellow musician who puts a lot of use into a KSP mounted on my own custom rig, and who has had custom circuits made, I’m saying great job!!! I like the idea of the LED reacting to the CV!
I've been lazy and just have a ziptied doepfer multicore thing going on behind my ksp, but I've long wanted to see something like this done. Thanks for posting it!
Oh man - I wanted a similar thing for my modular suitcase/Beatstep Pro, and I ended up getting a 24 port keystone panel and a bunch of 3.5mm keystone jacks. I'm pretty new to modular, so when I had the idea to use keystone jacks, I figured that it was going to be a slam dunk, but I couldn't find examples of anyone else using them and I was worried that there was a reason that they weren't being used by anyone else. Worked out pretty well for me, but it's definitely not as elegant as what you've done here.
Nice work! I did a similar thing for my beatstep pro. Only way less fancy. I didn’t add leds. Reused two small enclosures from some junked electronics. Cut holes in them for 1/8” jacks. Connected the ins/outs to a couple cat 6 jacks. This way I can plug short patch cables to “send”box from the BSP. Then run a couple cat 6 cables to the “receive” box. Patch out to the system from there. Really cleaned it up. Now the BSP lives on a sliding keyboard/mouse tray under the desk.
Since it's passive, I'm surprised there's no voltage drop from the led that would affect v/o tuning. Definitely need to build one of these for my deluge.
I have a Keystep (not Pro) and I *think* the output impedance is very low - in-loop current limiting resistors, maybe? - which might prevent this problem. I haven't really investigated carefully, but I have oscillators with 100k input impedance which leads to detuning when driven by my Mother-32 but seemingly not from the Keystep.
Very simple solution that I bet enormously improves efficiency for patching. Very elegantly done too. I shared your pain at the miscount and am inspired by your resistance to just placing another order and wasting a bunch of money. I'm not sure I could be as strong!! :D
Great thing about OSH park is they have no minimum board price, so tiny boards are very cheap, and free shipping (at least to US). I can totally understand milling the last boards if you really wanted to get it done soon. But if it were me and if I were not in a hurry (and having no CNC...) I absolutely would just have ordered three more.
Nice build. I love the LED color choice. If you ever want purple LEDs we have 3mm flat top purple LEDs that are actually diffused purple so they are still purple even when they are turned off. We have them custom made for our synths at Schreibmaschine Modular. I would be happy to sponsor a video with some of our rare LEDs in the future if you would like.
I couldn’t build this to save my life- but it would be cool to have an actual patch bay for the Microfreak. That dumb thing with the lights remains incomprehensible for years on…
Great idea, but I balked at the mounting hardware you needed. Did you consider designing the PCBs in blocks of threes or sixes with a perforation half way? You could have cut your stand-off, M3 bolt and threadlocker (you used threadlocker right?) bill down by a third or even a half. I would have thought of that immediately after reading an order confirmation email from the PCB supplier. Another idea could have been a back panel to mount the boards to. A bit more work, but for me, anything that reduces the amount of visible mounting holes reduces the chances I'll drill one out of alignment. Not sure what thickness you used for the panel but keeping the blank section in would have helped with its rigidity, especially after drilling a small army worth of holes in it. Most importantly, it would have offered you a place to put some of those cats stickers.
Looks very good. But I wouldn't have soldered the cables on the board. It would have been easy to solder sockets at the back instead of soldering the cables directly on the board and then you would rather have had (more) freedom for later moving the setup and possible changes. In addition, the plug connection is "safer" when it comes to cable breaks, etc. It's not too late yet….😊
That is nice! A quick question for the LEDs. don't you have a slight drop in voltage when they are there? Like when passively splitting a CV and going to 1v/oct inputs.
Very nice! Something like this would be very useful in my setup as well. One question, though: do you find the LEDs end up affecting tuning at all for the pitch CV?
i really love it. i have a piano background so i love having the weighted keys. i did have a hard time figuring out the exact button press combo for saving sequences though
make more and sell them! I would buy *not pink LEDs though, maybe purple, I would buy for the KeyStep and the BeatStep too. I don't know really why most of the patchbays don't have LEDs, noise maybe?? ... I like to use lighted cables Andrew Huang sold me once, they are very handy because sometimes I made a intrincate patch, with the LEDs I can quickly check if the signal path is the correct. So, here's your first customer
probably noise and every component adds to the materials cost. selling hardware isn't for me but you could totally upload the board file from the repo to a fab house and get them manufactured!
thanks! it was four channels of CV outputs. it's really hard to find something that lets you have multiple 1v/oct outputs for modular synths and i had been looking for a way to have a centralized control for my synth setup
Love the LEDs but have to ask: are they just powered by the CV signals? If they arent buffered outputs and are powering the LEDs you will experience signal loss. This shouldn't be too important except for pitch signals, but its still worth noting
they are not buffered. so far i haven't noticed pitch being affected but that is one reason why i kept everything so modular- if it becomes an issue i can easily swap out the four 1v/oct outputs
@@BlitzCityDIY good thinking. If you do experience issues bypassing the LEDs would be enough to solve that. Maybe just having a switch to turn them on or off would be a nice best of both worlds modification. For what it's worth, I have played with passively powered LEDs and in most cases the pitch drift wasn't an issue for me either. And I adore the pink LEDs!
this is great!! i've been working on the same thing, but to a standard eurorack panel instead of going on top of my case. but still with LEDs! do you find the LEDs affect the pitch voltages noticably? i'm only putting them on gates for mine
thanks! that sounds really cool, i haven't noticed any issues with the 1v/oct but i haven't tested with any equipment so it could be my ears are lying 😅
@@BlitzCityDIY oh fascinating, thanks. I'm gonna test this with a scope, and see if I can see any drop. I've heard people talk about it for leds on 1vo in general, but maybe the KSP specifically can push out enough to compensate
This is a brilliant idea and a problem I didn’t realize I had until you solved it. Are there any other ways around this using gear I can buy instead of build? I’m not in a place right now to take on a project such as this currently. Thanks!
Don't you get slight voltage drops because of the LEDs? So less precise v/oct control, since you are not buffering the signal. (or does the Keystep Pro have internal buffers for every CV output?)
Why not simplify it, connect via the midi port, then break out the midi signal into CV on the rack? There are lots of modules out there for this very purpose. That way you've only got 1 cable leading from the keystep... which was kind of the whole point of midi in the first place. :-p
Am I the only one who thought there were too many wires and screws? Well, yes, it looks impressive, but why not make boards combining at least 5-6 connectors, or one large one for all 25 (or how many there are)? Route all signals into one ribbon cable - which will at least avoid duplicating the ground for each signal and reduces the amount of complexly interwoven dust-collecting surfaces behind your rack. The cable can be branched into 3.5 connectors right behind the Keystep Pro itself, perhaps using a small adapter PCB. Anyway, your project is great and has given me some ideas on what I can do with my setup
This is a fantastic idea, it's something I've been struggling with on my beatstep. Def gonna steal this idea. Question, though. Do those leds have any adverse effect on your cv pitch tracking in the higher octaves?
For folks curious about the milling, ideally we wanted to use a single end mill to avoid tool changes with our bantamtools pcb mill. Only mishap we had was I went too deep on the outline cutout and scuffed the surface of the spoil board - not a big deal but good reminder to account for different tape thickness 😅 This turned out great and happy to help out!
thanks bud!
This could not be more up my alley 😎
"I accepted the mystery and moved on" - dying 😂
😆 thanks!
Hi, just got your video recommended, pretty cool build! I forwarded this to the work group chat ;)
ah cool! thank you!
Turned out super nice 😌 Also really nice editing on the video would love to see more 😃🙌🏻
thank you!
Very cool! I got halfway through DIYing a patchbay for my Beatstep Pro using HDMI but it was a real nightmare. Your solution is way more elegant and I love the LEDs!
thanks!
lol as fellow musician who puts a lot of use into a KSP mounted on my own custom rig, and who has had custom circuits made, I’m saying great job!!!
I like the idea of the LED reacting to the CV!
I've been lazy and just have a ziptied doepfer multicore thing going on behind my ksp, but I've long wanted to see something like this done. Thanks for posting it!
that's a good solution too!
Can you expand on that and tell me which exact thing you’re talking about here? Thanks!
Oh man - I wanted a similar thing for my modular suitcase/Beatstep Pro, and I ended up getting a 24 port keystone panel and a bunch of 3.5mm keystone jacks. I'm pretty new to modular, so when I had the idea to use keystone jacks, I figured that it was going to be a slam dunk, but I couldn't find examples of anyone else using them and I was worried that there was a reason that they weren't being used by anyone else. Worked out pretty well for me, but it's definitely not as elegant as what you've done here.
ALWAYS order extras when it comes to small pcbs. The cost is usually insignificant. But otherwise, great work!👍
thanks!
Nice work!
I did a similar thing for my beatstep pro. Only way less fancy. I didn’t add leds. Reused two small enclosures from some junked electronics. Cut holes in them for 1/8” jacks. Connected the ins/outs to a couple cat 6 jacks. This way I can plug short patch cables to “send”box from the BSP. Then run a couple cat 6 cables to the “receive” box. Patch out to the system from there. Really cleaned it up. Now the BSP lives on a sliding keyboard/mouse tray under the desk.
thanks! and your build sounds awesome!
Good to hear the look of deflation @ 2:55 was only temporary. Awesome project. Still needs more LEDs, but it's getting there 🙂 Thanks for the videos.
thanks! yeah i have some visualization project ideas to hopefully work on
I love this channel
Very cool project! Thanks for sharing!
thank you!
YOU ARE JUST AWESOME! I thought of sell my keystep actualluy and this seems really nice.. and thanks for share the PCB files :)
thank you!
Heyyyy it's been a little while, welcome back
thanks!
Since it's passive, I'm surprised there's no voltage drop from the led that would affect v/o tuning. Definitely need to build one of these for my deluge.
i haven't noticed anything obvious but definitely something to keep in mind
I have a Keystep (not Pro) and I *think* the output impedance is very low - in-loop current limiting resistors, maybe? - which might prevent this problem. I haven't really investigated carefully, but I have oscillators with 100k input impedance which leads to detuning when driven by my Mother-32 but seemingly not from the Keystep.
Very simple solution that I bet enormously improves efficiency for patching. Very elegantly done too. I shared your pain at the miscount and am inspired by your resistance to just placing another order and wasting a bunch of money. I'm not sure I could be as strong!! :D
thank you!
the synth sounding like a cat at 3:55 did not disappoint
😺😺😺
Very cool! Great solution to back-of-the-unit jacks!
thank you!
Another super cool project - and super cool to have you back as well. It's been a while!
thanks!
I'll have to find me some of those pink LEDs, those look rad!
yeah! i got them from digikey a few years ago but i think they're more ubiquitous now
Tayda has pink LEDs now. Very cheap
Great thing about OSH park is they have no minimum board price, so tiny boards are very cheap, and free shipping (at least to US). I can totally understand milling the last boards if you really wanted to get it done soon. But if it were me and if I were not in a hurry (and having no CNC...) I absolutely would just have ordered three more.
if my partner was not into milling i'd absolutely have placed an additional order 😆
Nice project ! Cool to see you back ! 😊
thanks!
Good to hear from you again.
thank you!
What a great build! 👍
Nice build. I love the LED color choice. If you ever want purple LEDs we have 3mm flat top purple LEDs that are actually diffused purple so they are still purple even when they are turned off. We have them custom made for our synths at Schreibmaschine Modular. I would be happy to sponsor a video with some of our rare LEDs in the future if you would like.
thanks! purple leds sound fun!
It's been a whileee 🎵Glad to see you again, very cool project!!
thanks!
I couldn’t build this to save my life- but it would be cool to have an actual patch bay for the Microfreak. That dumb thing with the lights remains incomprehensible for years on…
i love the idea of customizing gear to make it fit our setups and the microfreak could definitely benefit from that!
I accepted the mystery 😂This is recognizable.
Шикарно!
Pink LEDs FTW!
⚡⚡
It's been a while, but you're back 🎉
I was thinking if other engineers (beside myself) sometimes struggle counting; I must just lose focus🤷
it's definitely a recurring theme for me. i also knit and have been known to easily lose count of the stitches 😅
Wow!! Very cool channel. Thank you✨:)
thanks!
Great idea, but I balked at the mounting hardware you needed. Did you consider designing the PCBs in blocks of threes or sixes with a perforation half way? You could have cut your stand-off, M3 bolt and threadlocker (you used threadlocker right?) bill down by a third or even a half. I would have thought of that immediately after reading an order confirmation email from the PCB supplier. Another idea could have been a back panel to mount the boards to. A bit more work, but for me, anything that reduces the amount of visible mounting holes reduces the chances I'll drill one out of alignment. Not sure what thickness you used for the panel but keeping the blank section in would have helped with its rigidity, especially after drilling a small army worth of holes in it. Most importantly, it would have offered you a place to put some of those cats stickers.
fair points, my goal was to have it be super modular and this iteration meets my needs
Love this so great 🙌
thanks!
The rule of thumb states: "Always order more than you think you need." 😁
very true!
Looks very good. But I wouldn't have soldered the cables on the board. It would have been easy to solder sockets at the back instead of soldering the cables directly on the board and then you would rather have had (more) freedom for later moving the setup and possible changes. In addition, the plug connection is "safer" when it comes to cable breaks, etc. It's not too late yet….😊
niiiice!
thanks!
That is nice! A quick question for the LEDs. don't you have a slight drop in voltage when they are there? Like when passively splitting a CV and going to 1v/oct inputs.
i haven't noticed a voltage drop but i may test it to be sure
This is awesome :)
saw the pink LEDs and immediately subscribed
yay!
fuck this is so clever i love it!
thanks!
Dope!❤
thanks!
This is ace! New subscriber ✌🏻
thank you!
Very slick. Subbed.
A little idea for improvement. If you can, add a jst style connector at the back of each board in case you need to swap a module :D
ohh yeah!
Very nice! Something like this would be very useful in my setup as well. One question, though: do you find the LEDs end up affecting tuning at all for the pitch CV?
🔥 ❤
😺
What are your thoughts on the KSP? I had one for a while, but it seemed to be buggy, this was before the latest FW and such.
i really love it. i have a piano background so i love having the weighted keys. i did have a hard time figuring out the exact button press combo for saving sequences though
make more and sell them! I would buy *not pink LEDs though, maybe purple, I would buy for the KeyStep and the BeatStep too. I don't know really why most of the patchbays don't have LEDs, noise maybe?? ... I like to use lighted cables Andrew Huang sold me once, they are very handy because sometimes I made a intrincate patch, with the LEDs I can quickly check if the signal path is the correct. So, here's your first customer
probably noise and every component adds to the materials cost. selling hardware isn't for me but you could totally upload the board file from the repo to a fab house and get them manufactured!
@@BlitzCityDIY thank you, but it isn't for me either. I'll leave it in my "Someday" folder. 🤓👍
What a cool project! I'm considering a Keystep for controlling my modular system. What, if any, factors drove you to the Pro vs. the 32 or 37?
thanks! it was four channels of CV outputs. it's really hard to find something that lets you have multiple 1v/oct outputs for modular synths and i had been looking for a way to have a centralized control for my synth setup
@@BlitzCityDIY ah, that's good to know. Thanks!
lovely and well done. do you find the LED is causing pitch droop?
thanks! i have not
Love the LEDs but have to ask: are they just powered by the CV signals?
If they arent buffered outputs and are powering the LEDs you will experience signal loss. This shouldn't be too important except for pitch signals, but its still worth noting
they are not buffered. so far i haven't noticed pitch being affected but that is one reason why i kept everything so modular- if it becomes an issue i can easily swap out the four 1v/oct outputs
@@BlitzCityDIY good thinking. If you do experience issues bypassing the LEDs would be enough to solve that. Maybe just having a switch to turn them on or off would be a nice best of both worlds modification.
For what it's worth, I have played with passively powered LEDs and in most cases the pitch drift wasn't an issue for me either. And I adore the pink LEDs!
would love to participate in a in person music gear hackathon
that would be cool!
this is great!! i've been working on the same thing, but to a standard eurorack panel instead of going on top of my case. but still with LEDs! do you find the LEDs affect the pitch voltages noticably? i'm only putting them on gates for mine
thanks! that sounds really cool, i haven't noticed any issues with the 1v/oct but i haven't tested with any equipment so it could be my ears are lying 😅
@@BlitzCityDIY oh fascinating, thanks. I'm gonna test this with a scope, and see if I can see any drop. I've heard people talk about it for leds on 1vo in general, but maybe the KSP specifically can push out enough to compensate
Amazing
This is a brilliant idea and a problem I didn’t realize I had until you solved it. Are there any other ways around this using gear I can buy instead of build? I’m not in a place right now to take on a project such as this currently. Thanks!
Don't you get slight voltage drops because of the LEDs? So less precise v/oct control, since you are not buffering the signal.
(or does the Keystep Pro have internal buffers for every CV output?)
Doesn't the added LEDs reduce the voltage at the output of your rack compared to the output of the Beatstep?
Why are you using Video 3.5mm jacks? Aren't at patch cables except midi supposed to be mono?
they're mono 1/8" / 3.5mm jacks 🙂
como suena esa maravilla ?
What software is Eagle? Is it free?
Why not simplify it, connect via the midi port, then break out the midi signal into CV on the rack? There are lots of modules out there for this very purpose. That way you've only got 1 cable leading from the keystep... which was kind of the whole point of midi in the first place. :-p
because i wanted to use the CV outputs 🙂
@@BlitzCityDIY I will concede that, that's a valid reason... :-D
Am I the only one who thought there were too many wires and screws? Well, yes, it looks impressive, but why not make boards combining at least 5-6 connectors, or one large one for all 25 (or how many there are)? Route all signals into one ribbon cable - which will at least avoid duplicating the ground for each signal and reduces the amount of complexly interwoven dust-collecting surfaces behind your rack. The cable can be branched into 3.5 connectors right behind the Keystep Pro itself, perhaps using a small adapter PCB.
Anyway, your project is great and has given me some ideas on what I can do with my setup
Why is it lopsided?
This is a fantastic idea, it's something I've been struggling with on my beatstep. Def gonna steal this idea.
Question, though. Do those leds have any adverse effect on your cv pitch tracking in the higher octaves?
i haven't found there to be any issues but it could be my ears are lying 😅