I have a digital audio router that has a serial protocol for routing inputs to outputs and vice versa. The whole thing is rack mounted, but the remote control is designed to sit on a desk, which doesn’t work in our setup (where everything is on a rack and there’s no readily available place to put the remote). The company made their serial (9-pin) remote protocol available and it looks quite simple: http://www.z-sys.com/lit/32-000.pdf
I would want to install a small screen in a rackmount box, which is why I’m thinking Raspberry Pi. Making the app itself isn’t the concern but I want to make sure I can do this with a Pi board and Xojo:
send serial commands to the Digital Detangler
interface with a small (5"?) touch screen
I would want to be able to plug in a USB or PS/2 keyboard when setting things up, so you can name the inputs and outputs - just a plug on the front of the unit probably. For actual day to day usage, it’s strictly touch screen.
We’ll probably have about 40-50 inputs to the router and 8 outputs so naming them and potentially grouping them (some are multi-channel audio sets) to make routing simpler is why I’m thinking Pi vs a simple Arduino setup.
Yes you can do this with a Raspberry pi. I have success wih touchscreens (2 of them on 1 pi 5) with serial and phidgets on it (3 steppers, 1 motor and 30 io) without issues. Some struggles where optimizing some code. But that’s about it.
Xojo’s code is improved and runs pretty stable (make sure to catch exceptions.)
Cool. thanks. Which touchscreens have you used? I assume any small HDMI screen with USB for the touch component would work, correct?
How is Xojo with older Pi boards? I have a box with several Raspberry Pi 3 boards in it i’ve never used. I’m fine buying a newer/faster one but if the 3 is good enough I might as well use it since I’ve got it!
a Pi is overkill for such simple task…
and it takes ages to boot…
I would do this with an esp32, something like a cheap yellow display ?
and use a web browser to enter the input/output names into the board eeprom.
just my 2 cts.
It will be left on all the time like the router itself, so boot time isn’t really an issue.
I can do this in an Arduino no problem. But the device it’s controlling is handling multiple audio sources, from single-channel Mono to 8-channel multi-track tape. Right now we have about 18 devices that can be fed into this router. With an arduino or ESP, adding new devices and naming/grouping the channels they use will be harder to do. We are constantly adding new hardware to support new tape formats. The router can handle up to 64 inputs and 64 outputs, and by daisy chaining routers we can go much higher than that. Up to four routers. So managing that many channels with a simple button and knob interface is cumbersome.
The idea is to have a 5" screen on a 2U rackmount chassis. A USB keyboard can plug into the front to make initial setup easier. You’d need to name each individual audio channel, and then for multi-channel audio sources, you’d need to be able to group them so that instead of having to set up all 8 channels separately, you could say “Route the DA88 to the Capture system” and it will automatically grab the correct 8 channels.
Also, I have Xojo and Pi boards are cheap, so who cares if it’s overkill?