project.Close();

That's it - the project is complete!

After 12 months and $2000, spawned from a simple idea that was inspired by Robert Henke and made possible by TK and the Midibox community; I've given birth to a real life working MIDI controller deck! I don't know what else to say except to thank those who helped and I hope this blog serves as an inspiration or assistance to others wishing to embark on such a project. Well - now it's time to get down to business and work on some sets...

almost done

Finally got around to ordering the front plate! I ended up getting laser-cut mat-black acrylic, mostly because it was going to cost around $400-$600 to get in black anodized ali and I've ran out of money and need to be realistic. It ended up costing around $150 for supply and machining which is very fair, Jason @ Plastix was a great help and the job was delivered well above expectations. I basically provided them with my Visio layout, exported as a DXF which they fed that into their laser cutter and the finished product looks great.

I'm yet to decide on getting any printing/artwork done on the face plate or not - it will do plain matt black for now. Also I need to annodize/paint the frame sides so they're black like the rest (annodized will cost around $70, paint will cost around $20). Also I might get some nice stained timber side pieces to compliment the overall design and match the look of my Virus KB, but maybe not. There's a lot more I should write here but I've lost momentum in the whole documentation process, my apologies.

I had to also open her up today and fix some broken solder joints and fix hardware bugs, hopefully that's the last of them. Software-wise she's now running about 99% stable so that's very cool...I'm spending most of my time now working creative on the sets. There's a dnb set and a proggy set so far - I'll post both of them up here once they mature a little.

As promised, in a few weeks I'll clean this project doco up and move it to a wiki page on midibox site so it's where it belongs. I'll post a link here when I do...till then there might be more to come....but some nice pics for now.