Much to my own suprise my first build of the megadrum went well, and everything worked first go. Given my soldering skills (lack of) electronics knowledge (lack of), and patience (complete absence of) I did not - deep down - expect to ever work !!!
Anyway, my initial build was to the point that I had the display working (with very very rough cabling) and the actual unit working with piezo's and hooked up via USB to ezdrummer. All was going tooooo well.
I did not (and have not) boxed up the board or anything at this time.
I then started building some DIY pads, which seemed to work well (at least for my own humble needs) and began work on a dual zone cymabal (see seperate post).
It was at this time I thought I should sort out the keyboard. I experimented with a few scavanged items (including an encoder that I planned to use at a later date. All functioned well, but given that I had not yet planned to box the unit yet, they were a bid cimbersome having various switches danging around. Instead I used a set of microswithes already attatched to a circuit board. I checked (or I thought I checked) any exisiting connections on the board, but when attatched and powered up I would intermitently get scrolling through the menus. Unfortunately my constant moving of the board finally told on the dodgy LCD cables, which started to fall apart.
So, I redid the LCD cable with much better ribbon cabling... and the problems really started.
*******
It took a few attempts to get my LCD working again, despite what I thought was a much better job of the cable, but during this time I would occassionally get either 1) garbage characters, or 2) a line of blocks on the firts line only.
Finally, it was all working again, and so did the buttons after removing anything that could have possibly been a short on the microswitch board.
I returned to work on the cymbal, but suddenly I got blocks or garbage again. Thinking it could be the LCD cable because of what happened before, I kept fiddling with the cabling. Stupidly I did this with the megadrum powered up and .... fizzz puff.... one lightly fried atmega...
Ultimately this is probably a fairly conclusive diagnoses BUT !!!!!
I repowered and it worked again... indeed it worked for another day
... until... once again.. blocks.. then garbage... then block... blocks and more blocks.
I could still get the firmware update screen with a left button on power up AND the unit actually functioned.. ie. I could trigger ezdrummer... but I had no useful display. My attempts to update the firmware did not work (and I tried many many times)... then, probably as a result of this, I lost the ability to get the update screen.
All that remains now is the fact that "USB audio device" is recognised..but there is no functionality.
So (some of) you have read all this and probably conclude that my megadrum is dead.. and I would presume so too... BUT is there ANY hope... I would try to program my atmega through an alternate method, but none of my PC's or laptops have serial OR lpt ports. Is it even worth trying....and if it is... how do I do it without those ports???
I am asking a miracle.. but is there any hope ?!?!?!?!
