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This website is maintained by Roman Sowa, an independent designer of electronic circuits for music.
Sales is based only on the web, without distributor chain, so every customer gets the boards directly from the factory in Poland, EU.
Products described here are electronic modules, and installation may require basic soldering skills to connect wires to your contacts, or potentiometers, although in some cases there's no soldering at all required.
You can find here several types of MIDI controllers, for small, big and large instuments, with keyboards, knobs, sliders, lights, solenoids, you name it.
Quality first - highest quality product, not compromised by small physical size, useful modularity and affordable price. Unlike our competitors, we do not say that other products are useless crap made only to make your life harder, it's your choice to decide which approach is most convenient and usable.
All MIDI boards sold here (with small exceptions) have a few outstanding features that are obvious and absolute minimum requirements for any decent electronic equippment, but you can find them highlighted in many websites, so maybe it's good idea to point them here as well
Those are in particular:
- all designs presented here are original, not published anywhere else and firmware is originally written by midi-hardware.com (not in India)
- all boards are proudly manufactured in Poland, EU (not in China), using circuit boards produced locally, and components from trusted distributors, while most important components directly from IC manufacturers' warehouses.
- extremely small size that gives you freedom of putting them anywhere. If you find smaller board
with same functionality, I might consider designing even smaller one just for you, for free.
- unbelievable small power consumption making possible to power all of them with small batteries
- some models have auto-power off feature, so you can use them with 1 set of batteries even for couple
of years, without worrying about switching power off
- all settings are available onboard, no need to use computer for setup
- all settings are stored in non volatile memory, meaning they remain unchanged after removing power
- in most cases the same pinout is used for keys, making it very easy to connect, as 1 wire per
key is used.
- they are all made in most advanced SMT (Surface Mount) technology, and take advantage of
recent developments in microcontrollers
- printed circuit boards are high quality glass epoxy FR4 type, double sided with platted thru holes
and nice green soldermask, and most of newly manufactured boards are gold plated for better performance, if not
for the glamorous look
- MIDI cable to board is removable using very high quality, small connector, the same type in all boards
- All MIDI encoders come with either onboard DIN socket(s) or MIDI DIN5 metal die cast socket (not cheap crap) with 0.6m (2 ft.) or 25cm (10'') cable, terminated with high quality connector mating the boards.
This way you can easily mount the DIN5 socket on the panel without need to solder any wires.
- most of the boards are capable of generating any kind of MIDI messages possible, although there are few exceptions
(RPN, NRPN), but if required, this can be implemented in custom build
- all products equipped with MIDI IN properly recognize all incoming MIDI messages, including running status, zero velocity, sysex, timecode etc. which is basicaly obvious, but it doesn't hurt to mention that here too.
- easy reconfiguration/growth by plugging scanner modules for more switch inputs, or analog inputs for potentiometers.
LED drivers and LCD displays also available (did you know that "D" in "LCD" stands for "display"? this means the term "LCD display"
is a bit redundant).
- every scanner board comes with proper interconnect cables (expander board to main board). You provide only the ribbon
cables that are soldered to your instrument contacts. Ribbon cable can be also ordered here as the "RibbonTail".
- transmission between the boards uses proprietary protocol, which is faster and more secure than MIDI, and it creates
less interference due to controlled spectrum. There is no typical MIDI merging in between modules, no worries about staging latency.
- all boards are assembled using world class PACE and JBC soldering equipment, by well trained operator, in ESD safe environment, and complying with RoHS EU directive (eco friendly lead-free process invented by EU authorities for the only purpose of making more money by the biggest companies in electronic industry).
- all boards are carefully checked in microscopic vision, after each assembly stage. Programmed, functionally tested, and immediately sealed in ESD bag to safely keep in stock.
- boards are shipped in ESD protection bags, with cables and printed manual, all in nice cardboard box.
- we ship anywhere in the world via FedEx, UPS, registered Priority Mail or Express Mail (EMS).
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