Leo Bodnar BBI 32

[tiburon]

Hi,

Has anyone tried these cards yet ? I'm especially interested in the rotary switches boards, looks like these could save us a lot of connections.
Ian, didn't you say you have a few of these to play with ?

Martin

[bobsta63]

Hi tiburon,

I bought three of these a few weeks ago (I bought the DIY version) I haven't used them yet but I did also purchase two of the rotary switches with the PCB's attached like you say... in the hope to save some connections as apparently only requires a single input obviously must have some embedded diodes or something

I plan to have a play with these boards this weekend... I just need to purchase some USB cables so I can solder them to the boards before they'll work lol...
I'll give you an update as soon as I've had a good play


Cheers,
Bobby

[tiburon]

Thanks, sounds good.

Martin

[bobsta63]

OK Martin... I'll keep you updated - Like I say I'm hoping to have a play with them this weekend

[ian@737ng.co.uk]

Hi,

Has anyone tried these cards yet ? I'm especially interested in the rotary switches boards, looks like these could save us a lot of connections.
Ian, didn't you say you have a few of these to play with ?

Martin

my appologies for being 'conspicuous by my absence', but i have so many projects on the go, i just dont seem to have any time these days

ok, here's the deal with the rotary's......

this is how it works and what it does.
there are two solder pads on the PCB. one is attached to the centre pin of
the rotary switch. that obviously is the common. the other is attached to all
the outer pins of the rotary switch across the PCB, so that has to be the input.
so, i've soldered the leads on and the common lead has been connected to a GND
input on the BBI-32 card and the other is attached to the button input.
just for my experiment, i have attached to B1 and it's GND.
this what happens..... the switch has 12 positions.
with the switch turned all the way anti clockwise to the first
position, as you turn the switch clockwise, the next consecutive button pulses,
like pressing a button and releasing it.
so turning the switch from position 1 to position 2, pulses the no.2 button.
moving the switch from position 1 to position 12 pulses each button as it passes
that position on the switch. so you get 2,3,4,5,6,7 etc all the way to 12 pulsing.
if you download the BBI-32 utility from Leo's site, you can 'adjust' the pulse width
as you can for encoders on the BU family cards.
there is also a 'Start Position' box which i assume allows you to connect the rotary
switch to any button input, tell the card what is the first position button no. and the 11
buttons above the input button will pulse. but i haven't played with that yet.
what i have found is this....... in my test i used button 1 as the input. so that means
the rotary will pulse button one to 12. but if you only want for example 6 positions,
you can set the rotary using the stop collar for 6 inputs. this means the rotary will only
pulse inputs 1 - 6. you can attach normal switches from input 7 and they work normally.
well that should give you some thing to chew on. i'll have a look at this 'start position'
option at the weekend.

hope that gives you the general idea cap'n

regards from wales

ian

[tiburon]

Interesting, thanks Ian. Are you saying that if you use only say 6 stops you could use the other stops-connections to connect normal switches? If they're all connected to each other how does the card know which stop you're choosing? Or does it see the stops in relation to the first one? Sorry for the extra questions.

Martin

[ian@737ng.co.uk]

right as i said in my post, if for example you only want 6 stops on the rotary, you set the number of stops with the stop collar at 6. using B1 as my start point, i would connect the common on the rotary to any GND from B1 to B6 because the GND connections on the board are common to all inputs and as we would be using B1 to B6.
now although the rotary can pulse upto 12 buttons, we are only using 6 (B1 to B6). so the rotary will not influence or input to B7 and above.
it then becomes possible to attach any type of switch to B7 and above because there is no other input to that button as the rotary is limited to inputting upto B6 if you see what i mean
phew! did i explain that properly.
what i need to do is look at this start position, but as i have had no need of this yet, i haven't explored what it does.
hope that cleared it upfor you captain

regards

ian

[bobsta63]

Thats pretty cool Ian.... so without taking this topic way off topic, this would mean that if you bought 11 of these rotary switch PCB's you could actually connect 12 separate switches to each of the 'pins' meaning that from the 11 PCBs and a single BBI-32 you could actually connect and use 132 buttons/switches! - In theory atleast!

[tiburon]

Am I alone in thinking this could be the Sim builders wet dream ?

[bobsta63]

Am I alone in thinking this could be the Sim builders wet dream ?

132 inputs is rather good yes, remember that you'd also need to purchase the rotary switch PCB's too at £2.50 each so to get 132 inputs (assuming my theory does work) you'd be looking at the following cost:-

1x BBI-32 @ £29.99 ea (although I personally use the DIY versions at a cost of £19.99)
11x Rotary switch PCB @ £2.50 ea

Total cost of a 132 input card (switches only as you wouldn't be able to configure encoders I wouldn't have thought as a software imitation as you'd have to configure the board using Leo's software as running 11x rotary switches) would be a total cost of: £57.49

I'm not sure how the total price and effort required to get the 132 switch inputs measures up against other manufacturers of input cards but yeah... its interesting (assuming it would work but from what Ian describes there is no reason it wouldn't!)