From Livid Wiki

Contents 1 Quick Start 1.1 Connecting a Single Button 1.1.1 Connecting The Cables 1.1.1.1 Attaching The Cables to The Board 1.2 Connecting a Single Potentiometer 1.2.1 Connecting The Cables 1.2.1.1 Attaching The Cables to The Board 1.3 Connecting a Single LED 1.3.1 Connecting The Cables 1.3.2 Attaching The Cables to The Board 1.4 Configuring the Brain 1.4.1 Basic Brain Editor Setup 2 Checking Your Setup 2.1 Testing The Button 2.2 Testing The Potentiometer 2.3 Testing The LED 3 You're Finished

Quick Start

Before we get into the details of what can be done with the Brain, this Quick Start guide will get you "making" with a single button, potentiometer (i.e. slider, fader, knob), and LED (light) connected to the board. The Brain can control up to 179 buttons, 64 analog controls, and 48 LEDs, but for the sake of learning, we are only going to cover one of each type of control in this guide. The goal of this guide is to get users started, without examining technical details. Advanced users may wish to skip over this section.

Before you start with this section you will need:

1. 1 push button (included)
2. 1 potentiometer (included)
3. 1 LED (included)
4. 1 47 ohm resistor for the LED
5. 3 Ribbon cables (included)
6. Soldering iron and solder
7. Wire stripper (or razor blade)

A video guide of our Quick Start can be found here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yyv1BnH_-vA
There is also a video with a more advanced example, "Livid Builder Tutorial - My First Controller": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sgTDp4509c

Connecting a Single Button

Let's start with buttons. A button is a "digital" connection, meaning it is either "ON" or "OFF." Imagine you have two wires, each connected to a terminal on a batter, and you connect the ends together, this completes a circuit. This is what a button does, but in a more convenient and safe form! You used a button every time you turn on a light. You could actually just use two bare wires connected to the Brain, but I will be using a basic on/off button that you can find at any electronics store. We are nice, and include one with your Brain.

Connecting The Cables

1. Cut the 16-pin and the 14 pin ribbon cable in half. (These cables are easily identified: they have "14" or "16" written on the black connector). Separate the wires from each other: just pinch one wire and pull down from the neighbor. Next, strip the end of each wire to expose the wires. "Stripped" a wire simply means "removing the plastic around the wire to expose the conductive metal." It's always best to have the right tools, but here is a pretty good explanation on stripping a wire without a wire stripper: http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Strip-Wire-Without-A-Wire-Stripper/
2. Now locate the first wire on the 16 pin ribbon cable. The first wire, also called "pin 1," is always red.
3. Attached that wire to one side of the button, and solder it. It doesn't matter what side you use. If you have never soldered before it is pretty easy. This video guide is a pretty good way to get started http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLfXXRfRIzYand this comic should make you realize it's really easy:http://www.tvbgone.com/images/mfaire/soldercomic.jpg
   
4. Now locate the red wire on the 14 pin ribbon cabl, connect it to the other side of the button, and solder it.

Attaching The Cables to The Board

All ribbon cables are connected to the board to the "pin headers." This term refers to the tall wires that stand up on the Brain that serve as the male counterpart to the female ends of the ribbon cables. You will notice that there are different size pin headers and ribbon cables; 10 pins for analog controls labeled JP7-JP14, 16 pins for buttons labeled JP1, 14 pins for the "external" labeled JP3 (more on that later), and 14 pins for LEDs labeled JP2. But let's not get ahead of ourselves! Let's just connect the single button to the board.

1. Locate JP1 on the board.
2. Connect the 16 pin ribbon cable to JP1 with the red line on the ribbon cable matching pin 1: make sure the arrows on the Brain's pin headers line up with the red line of the ribbon cable.
3. Now locate JP3 on the board.
4. Connect the 14 pin ribbon cable to JP3 with the red line on the ribbon cable matching pin 1: make sure the arrows on the Brain's pin headers line up with the red line of the ribbon cable.

Now that we have the button connected to the board we can move on to connecting a potentiometer.

Connecting a Single Potentiometer

A potentiometer (commonly referred to as a "pot") provides variable resistance to control a voltage. In more familiar terms, think about using a volume knob on a stereo: as you turn it to the right, the volume increases. This is because the volume knob is reducing the resistance to the voltage that carries the audio signal. Not all potentiometers are knobs - variable resistance can come from touch sensors, bend sensors, tilt sensors, and more. The most common are sliders (slide potentiometer) or knobs (rotary potentiometer). We are going to be using a (brace yourself!) standard single turn linear 100k ohm rotary potentiometer with three connections.

Connecting The Cables

Most linear rotary pots have only three connections; ground, voltage, and signal (a.k.a, "the wiper" - think of the car's windshield wiper, and you'll understand!). Look at the potentiometer in your hand and you will see three connections where we will solder. With the connections facing you (at six o'clock), the left is the ground, the center is the wiper (or signal that will be sent to create the adjustments) and the right is the voltage input. Here's how it works: the voltage comes in one end and is sent to the ground, providing a reference. The physical position of the wiper sends the current through more or less resistance, and sends that changed voltage out from the wiper connection. A mechanical analogy is a vent control in a car or home - the blower is always blowing at the same speed, but depending on how much you open the vent, decreasing the blockage, is what affects how much air gets into the cabin. Now we are ready to begin.

1. Cut the 10 pin ribbon cable in half. Divide out and strip the ends of the first 3 wires starting with the red wire.
2. Locate the first wire on the ribbon cable and connect it to the left most solder lug connection of the rotary pot (the pot's connections should be facing you at six o'clock). The first wire also called pin 1, is always red. This is the ground connection.
   

   

   Rotary Potentiometer Connections
3. Locate the second wire on the 10 pin ribbon cable and connect it to the right most connection of the rotary pot. This is the voltage.
4. Locate the third wire on the 10 pin ribbon cable and connect it to the center connection of the pot. This is the wiper or signal.
5. Solder all the pot's connections.

Attaching The Cables to The Board

Just as we did with the button connections we need to connect the ribbon cables to the board using the pin headers. The pin headers used for the analog connections are labeled JP7-JP14. Since we are only using a single potentiometer we only need to use one pin header. It is worth noting that with each pin header you can connect up to eight potentiometers.

1. Locate JP7 on the board.
2. Connect the 10 pin ribbon cable to the JP7 with the red line on the ribbon cable matching pin 1. To match it to pin 1 make sure the arrows on the Brain's pin headers line up with the red line of the ribbon cable.

There you have it. We have just successfully connected a rotary potentiometer to the board. Now it is time to move on to LEDs.

Connecting a Single LED

LED stands for "Light Emitting Diode." LEDs provide a source of light that consume only a small amount of energy and last much longer then filament-based lighting sources. LEDs are used on almost all control surfaces and are very easy to work with. LEDs come in many varieties of colors, sizes, and voltages. The Builder Brain supports blue, green, white, violet, and other high-voltage LED colors. We are going to use the supplied red green with this example with a 47 ohm resistor. All LEDs used with the Brain need a resistor. It's worth knowing that the value of the resistor depends on the color of the LED, but for this example you don't have to worry too much about this, just know that you need to use the supplied 47 ohm resistor with the LED.

Looking at the LED you will notice that one leg or lead of the LED is longer then the other. This is important to note because one side of the LED needs to be connected to the 14 pin ribbon cable connected to JP2, and the other to JP3 for power. The long leg (anode) of the LED is positive and should be connected to the External header JP3 with the supplied 47ohm resistor in between the LED and the pin. The short leg (cathode) is the negative and should be connected to the LED Matrix header LP2 using the 14 pin ribbon cable.

You may want to use LEDs in conjunction with your buttons to show status, use them to create animated sequences, or just have them as lighting for your controller. The buttons are activated by sending MIDI or sysex messages, but don't worry too much about this now as it will be covered later. This is really just so you understand how they are connected.

Connecting The Cables

For this connection you only need to use one 14 pin ribbon cable for one connection, and one of the wires on the other 14 pin ribbon that we already used for the buttons already attached to the External Pin Header JP3.

1. Locate the unused half of the 14 pin ribbon cable, strip the ends of the red wire. Solder this connection to the shorter leg of the LED. The short leg of the LED indicates the cathode (negative).
2. Locate the second wire (directly next to the red wire) on the ribbon cable that is already connected to JP3, this is anode (positive).
3. Using the supplied 47 ohm resistor, solder it to the second to last wire (pin 13) on JP3.
4. Now solder the resistor connected to pin 13 on JP3 to the longer leg of the LED.

Attaching The Cables to The Board

1. Attached the unused 14 pin ribbon cable to the LED Matrix Header JP2.
2. Since the other end is already connected to JP3 there is nothing else to connect.

Now you have successfully connected the LED to the board. This is what the board with the connections should look like:

If your board doesn't look like this, please go back to each step to see what you missed. If it does then the connection process is done and we are ready to configure the board.

Configuring the Brain

Before you can actually use the Brain to convert your turns and pushes into MIDI, you need to use the Brain Editor application to tell the Brain what you have connected (or are planning to connect) to it. By default, the Brain assumes you don't have anything connected. Before connecting the Brain we must make sure the computer recognizes the Brain board. First plug in the USB cable to the Brain USB jack. For Mac, open Audio Midi setup and check to see that "Brain" shows up as a device. On Windows, it will show up in the connected hardware devices as either "USB Audio Device" or "Livid Brain," depending on the version of Windows. The Brain Editor application used to set the number of connections and the pins used. Before you can configure the Brain you will have to download the latest version of the Brain Editor from lividinstruments.com/support_downloads.php

The Editor may seem a little daunting at first, so we will give you exact instructions here to get this basic setup working, without any technical reasoning, just to get you started. Once you get to know how the pin headers work, the Editor is actually quite simple and intuitive.

Basic Brain Editor Setup

These instructions cover the very basics of configuring the setup. We will give you very specific instructions here, so a complete reading of the Editor manual is not needed at this time.

Make sure your device is connected and showing up as a device before starting the Editor

1. Press the Hardware Configuration button to open the Hardware Configuration window.
   
   
   
2. In the BUTTONS section of the Hardware Configuration window press the pin button labeled 1 to turn it green.
3. Check the "enable pullups on pins 9-16".
4. In the ANALOG section of the Hardware Configuration window change the number of analog controls to 1.
5. In the DIRECT CONNECTED LED section of the Hardware Configuration window press the pin button labeled 1 to turn it green.
6. Your hardware configuration window should look like the image below. You only need to worry about the Direct Connections section of the Hardware Configuration.
   

   

   Editor Configuration
   
   
7. Once you have completed the above steps press the the "Save to Brain" in the lower right of the Hardware Configuration to send your setup to the Brain.
   

Checking Your Setup

Now that you have successfully connected your components and configured the Brain, we are going to make sure it actually works. With the board connected, open the Brain Editor application and press the "View MIDI" button. With this window open, you can view the incoming messages from your controller.

Testing The Button

Press the button attached to the Brain. Each press should send out Note 0 with a velocity of 64 when you press the button, and a velocity of 0 when you release.

Testing The Potentiometer

With the View MIDI window still open, move the knob from the left to the right. The data in the window should be sending controller number 0 with the data going from 0-127. The knob will read 0 when it is all the way to the left, and 127 when it is all the way to the right. All MIDI controller data, also know as "cc" or continuous controller has a value range of 0-127.

Testing The LED

Lighting the LED requires a MIDI message. Unlike the button and the pot, which send MIDI data to the computer, the LEDs receive MIDI data to know when to light up. To send it MIDI data open the "Send MIDI" window, change the duration (ms) to 2000, the note# to 0 (do this even if it is already set) and press enter (mac) or return (PC) and your LED should light up for 2 seconds.

You're Finished

If you have gotten this far you have successfully completed your first controller. If you have completed all these steps and it still isn't working, start with the beginning of each step and try again. When you move on from here and make your own complete controller, you are going to want to read the complete Brain Editor and the Brain manuals to figure out how to use more advanced features, but this should give you a pretty good idea on how the Livid Brain works