Thu Jul 05, 2018 10:49 pm
Hello,
My name is Anthony and I'm a musician that's working on my first Pi project. I'm building a musical pi thing. Not sure of what to call it exactly, but it'll function as a Midi Fighter style instrument with Sanwa arcade buttons, and as a DAW, effects processor, looper, and so on.
Anyways in doing my own research, topics on this forum always come up at the top of the search results. So I thought I'd join the community and give back. I've noticed there can be some gate keeping on this forum, so after I complete my project I'm planning to write up a post on some common questions asked here that I've had and tend to be gate kept. My favorite reply so far was "if you have to ask, you probably shouldn't do it." This forum is intended for people to share, ask and learn about a board that was itself originally intended as a learning tool for children. If you didn't have to ask, there's nothing to learn. It was entertaining to see that irony lost on the person who posted the reply, but at the same time its unfortunate to see those replies as being very common.
If everyone took that advice, the Raspberry PI Foundation would likely go out of business lol. I even saw another reply instructing someone to design, manufacture, and write specific machine code for their own PCB, to obtain a functionality the original poster asked about. After the intimidating set of complex instructions, they concluded that it wasn't worth it and impossible for a beginner like the OP. They failed to mention that such a board already exists by a particular name, and is cheaply available plug-n-play from all the big online retailers. There's always a way for anyone to do something DIY.
So after doing further research, I've answered many questions myself and plan to share what I've found. A few particular questions are frequently asked and have yet to be answered adequately or at all. Some examples by topic: Reusing existing LCD displays from other devices, finding cheap displays, desoldering/soldering usb sockets and cables, setting up and choosing a headless Pi for maximum speed in specific applications, customizing linux, studio quality audio I/O, using the display DSI port, and so on. Hopefully my post will be an informative starting point for others who come across it in search results, and will clear up misinformation that's falsely made certain things out to be dead ends. That's something I wish I had when I started. The spirit of DIY'ing with Pi's is about creativity, working it out for yourself, learning, and being affordable, so as to lower the barrier of learning technology for more people. Anyways that's why I decided to join, and hopefully I'll get to drafting up that post soon.