You're right, I am looking at all the MIDI messages handled by the MIDInes and writing more and more features each day (see page one). The more feedback I get from users like you, the more things I can program in before it is finally finished. So if you have any concrete features you would like to see (make MIDI CC message xx-xx do yy), either let me know here, or pledge to see the project get finished and suggest features when I finish writing up the tech docs.
1 May 10, 2011 4:20 am
Re: ChipMaestro $50 NES Midi Cartridge Kickstarter Campaign (45 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)
2 May 10, 2011 3:42 am
Re: ChipMaestro $50 NES Midi Cartridge Kickstarter Campaign (45 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)
Awesome, when you pledge, I'll send over tech docs to every backer by the end of the week, so you can start making feature requests and recommendations.
3 May 10, 2011 3:30 am
Re: ChipMaestro $50 NES Midi Cartridge Kickstarter Campaign (45 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)
That's true, from the hardware side, the only difference is the pullup/down resistors and the headers. In the dev package, I'm also including AVR and JTAG programmers. So if you already have those, and you know which end of the soldering iron is hot 
, I suggest going for the regular Chip Maestro. However if you want the complete package, I'd suggest going for the dev kit.
4 May 10, 2011 2:31 am
Re: ChipMaestro $50 NES Midi Cartridge Kickstarter Campaign (45 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)
low-gain wrote:
you might try obtaining a copy of MidiNES to understand just how powerful the cart is.. it will give you an idea of where the bar has been set.
It's super powerful and you'd have to have those features and more to get me to buy.. and if you matched midines 100% i'd say it's easily worth more than $100-150 so long as you made stock and sold from stock and delivered in a quick and timely manner.but first things first.. invest in a MidiNES cart to see what it's capable of.
I received a MIDINes when I started developing the Chip Maestro in a trade for a prototype version, and have been using it as a benchmark ever since. For accurate, low latency MIDI to NES note synthesizing, the Chip Maestro matches MIDINes on Video Off mode.
My primary goals were to make it:
1. Fast
2. Reliable
3. Inexpensive
Matching the MIDINes would require matching the price, and that conflicted with my top three priorities. However, if you feel that you would prefer to have the more advanced features at the expense of speed and reliability, consider pledging and receiving a dev kit, so that you can customize the Chip Maestro to your needs.
5 May 9, 2011 9:40 pm
Re: ChipMaestro $50 NES Midi Cartridge Kickstarter Campaign (45 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)
*E wrote:
Saskrotch wrote:i like how he says MIDI like Meaty
gross!
I thought the same thing!
except I didn't like it
6 May 9, 2011 7:02 pm
Re: ChipMaestro $50 NES Midi Cartridge Kickstarter Campaign (45 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)
I also pronounce meme like meh-meh. I calls em like I sees em
Don't need to know any asm, this is a completely Plug and Play cartridge for MIDI instruments and computers with an inexpensive USB->MIDI peripheral. This would output the NES-synthesized notes into your DAW, for post-production.
7 May 9, 2011 6:25 pm
Re: ChipMaestro $50 NES Midi Cartridge Kickstarter Campaign (45 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)
Right, this cartridge is all about audio production.
The cartridge microcontroller has a lot of ROM left over, even after implementing all the features, so if you wanna pick up a dev kit from the Kickstarter, you can hack it open and program any code you would like
8 May 9, 2011 5:10 pm
Re: ChipMaestro $50 NES Midi Cartridge Kickstarter Campaign (45 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)
Thanks for the MIDI docs, I'll try to implement as many of those CC's as possible, and also see if I could map them to piano keys on the lowest octaves.
That's one of my prototypes, before I learned how to use CPLDs. All those logic IC's were replaced with a single CPLD, which feeds data to the NES by itself. The Arduino injects code into the CPLD so that it doesn't have to use resources keeping the NES constantly updated.
9 May 9, 2011 5:07 pm
Re: ChipMaestro $50 NES Midi Cartridge Kickstarter Campaign (45 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)
Download code to the RAM on the cartridge or the NES? The cartridge has no RAM, it's a microcontroller->CPLD, with the CPLD passing opcodes to the 2a03 chip to synthesize notes.
10 May 9, 2011 4:57 pm
Re: ChipMaestro $50 NES Midi Cartridge Kickstarter Campaign (45 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)
Is there a list of all the MIDI ccs supported by the Midines? The one I have doesn't seem to respond to the more common messages...
Volume is implemented; it is tied to velocity of the key pressed in Piano mode, and can also be manipulated in Tracker mode in the usual way.
I was thinking about vibrato, and doing something similar to how the chipophone does it (making a setting so that when you press two keys, the NES does a vibrato instead of simply playing both) Let me know what you guys think!
11 May 9, 2011 4:37 pm
Re: ChipMaestro $50 NES Midi Cartridge Kickstarter Campaign (45 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)
Hey guys, I'm the designer of the cart, and I'd be happy to answer any and all questions.
Currently Noise support is only available on MIDI Channel 5. Due to the difficulties of manipulating 4 channels with one keyboard, I have, by default, set noise to only play when data is received on channel 5. This will all be configurable, so if you wish to play only triangle and noise waves on a keyboard, you will be able to set it to do so using your MIDI piano (the lowest octave cannot be played on an NES anyway as the clock speed is too low, therefore I am reserving it for settings).
No DPCM support, as I am going for a rock-solid, inexpensive cart. For the same reason, there is no video. In return you get incredibly low latency, and a product that performs reliably.
As for Polyphony, playing on channel 1 will be a userdefinable setting. Currently in the video, my friends are playing it so that the first note hit it a triangle wave, and the two subsequent notes are square wave 1 and square wave 2. If you are hooked up to either 4 pianos or a computer, you can play channels 2-5 simultaneously, for 4 sound polyphony.
CC commands are sparse, as I would like this product to be used with vanilla MIDI keyboards, therefore the lowest octave will be used for setting functions. Currently, you are able to set the duty cycle of each square wave, as well as the order in which channels are played in Piano mode. If you have any other suggestions for things I should implement, let me know! If you would like to take this cart even further, please buy a dev kit, which includes programmers for both chips on-board, as well as soldered programming headers and pull-up/down resistors on the JTAG.