Intro to digital programming?

[Teej212]

Can someone point me in the right direction to get started in writing code? would arduino be a good place to start? I just figure theres so much you can do with digital stuff, and i have had some pedal ideas cooking...

[Craiz]

http://www.codecademy.com/#!/exercises/0

I don't code, but this site showed me some of the basics. It's actually pretty fun.

[Schlatte]

Arduino is a good starting point. It's open source and there are tons over tons of tons of examples available for free.
I would just get an Arduino board (they're cheap too ) and try some easy examples. It is important that you understand what the code does, not just copy and paste.
Get used to for() while() if() etc. functions, learn the "grammar" of C, like declaring variables and variable types, arrays and so on... But also get used to the hardware! ADC, PWMs, bus systems and communicating with a PC.
It's also great for starting because of all the "shields" that are out there. Shields are just little piggyback circuit boards that you attach to your arduino, and there are tons of them out there. Some are expensive, most of them are fairly cheap. From ethernet, wifi, radio shields to LOL (lots of leds) shields, everything is commonly available. Check ebay for some good deals on all that stuff.
If you want to get deeper into using digital stuff for pedals, you should look for DSP stuff. Maybe you find an arduino DSP shield (like this: http://www.openmusiclabs.com/projects/codec-shield/ ), so you can really dig deeper into signal processing.
Good luck coding!

[Gone Fission]

The late Keith Barr did this after Alesis: http://www.spinsemi.com/ Pretty handy all-in-one DSP and AD/DA on a chip with some existing circuit boards available. Good knowledgebase and community forum: http://www.spinsemi.com/knowledge_base.html
http://www.spinsemi.com/forum/index.php

(Sean Costello of ValhallaDSP, who does great plugins, is a forum participant there. I've been hoping that he would make a hardware product with the Spin FV-1 -- that'd be the bomb.)

[McSpunckle]

Mannnn. I've been wanting to ask this for a while.

Gonna have to go through this shiz.

[cloudscapes]

I wrote a like 2000-word text for someone about this. it gets a bit more technical, but I'll try and find it. it might be on the computer at work

[Eric!]

Any news, cloudscapes?

[spacelordmother]

Also -- Teej obviously figured it out. Care to share you methods?

[oscillateur]

To get good at programming :
- learn the basics properly. If you don't understand the building blocks and global paradigms of whatever language you're using, you'll be in pain at some point soon.
- practice, practice, practice, ideally in the field you're interested in. The point is to get used to solving the problems you're faced with in this specific field in an efficient and relevant way.

I mean, there's more to it but that's what it boils down to in the end.

[Teej212]

lol what a throwback. best way to learn is from experimenting! gonna get an arduino something this summer to kickstart some projects...

[Strange Tales]

To get good at programming :
- learn the basics properly. If you don't understand the building blocks and global paradigms of whatever language you're using, you'll be in pain at some point soon.
- practice, practice, practice, ideally in the field you're interested in. The point is to get used to solving the problems you're faced with in this specific field in an efficient and relevant way.

I mean, there's more to it but that's what it boils down to in the end.

The more to it portion: Fuck Java.

[oscillateur]

Well, Java is only useful for a few specific things. I still think you'd be better off learning C++ first so that you're at least familiar with a lot of things that every programmer should be aware of, even if you end up using other languages for which these things are not relevant.

Thinking that there might be programmers out there who do not understand what pointers are makes me shudder...

[Strange Tales]

I just personally really hate Java and blast it whenever the opportunity arises (or I can just make my own and then blast it). Java killed all love I had for programming in one fell swoop so hard. Can barely retain any C++/VB information at all because fuck it.

[eatyourguitar]

I was going to say SPIN. After that i would say hunt down an aleph on the monome forums. About $1300 gets you a complete blackfin deveopment kit housed with all the analog and digital stuff you could want. Electro harmonix uses black fin. You could really compete with those products if you have the product development skills. Remember that most stuff at WMD and/or det3 (archangel sequencer, digitech etcc) was made by one person each respectively who does absolutely everything. DSPic was used with great success but i dont see it as being very relavent now that arm and blackfin came down in large quantity.

[multi_s]

there is some interesting benchmarks here when looking at either "microcontroller" (arm m3 m4, dispic etc) vs "dsp" chips like black fin from the audio weaver site.

http://www.dspconcepts.com/sites/defaul ... ckmann.pdf

SPIN is ok too., just pretty slow and limited, but very much all in one so that is pretty cool.

DSPic is ok. The fact that Microchip just recently bought atmel blows my mind because i feel like microchip has done nothing other than made a series of bad decisions/released a series of lack luster chips over the last 5 years and should probably just go out of business. instead here they are owning the competition.

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