Home › Forums › Help/Technical Questions › Hacking the 2880 OS
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October 14, 2012 at 11:50 am #82624harlequinMember
Has anyone around here ever done anything to modify the firmware of the 2880? I am interested in attempting to do some reprogramming on it if at all possible. Tho I think that the OS for the 2880 is very good, I would like to expand on it. If possible I really want to try to add the ability to communicate with a computer via the usb cable so that the device can be synchronized with a computer clock.
Thanks!
HarlequinOctober 15, 2012 at 5:57 am #118246CryabetesParticipantNot to be argumentative for the sake of being argumentative here, but it’d take some doing. Here’s my thinking behind the apprehensive response to rewriting the firmware on the 2880 to allow it to clock-sync via usb:
1 – why? A five-pin midi I/O-to-USB adapter is decently cheap, doubly so if you have one on a midi keyboard you’re using for the computer (in this hypothetical setup)
2 – have you tried doing “instant” program changes with an outboard sequencer at all? no good with the current firmware – it doesn’t change instantly, it ramps up and down on the speed, which screws up your start/end points – they’ll no longer align on the sequencer and the 2880.
3 – have you tried hotswapping loops via USB while the 2880 is playing? playback glitches, the computer reads errors, it’s a mess. No bueno.
4 – Not worth voiding the warranty on a $400/discontinued unit.The only applications I can even think of for that setup are tempo swaps/mapping (see point 2) or loop swaps (see point 3). Curious your thoughts on these points.
October 16, 2012 at 1:25 am #118258harlequinMemberCryabetes,
“1 – why? A five-pin midi I/O-to-USB adapter is decently cheap, doubly so if you have one on a midi keyboard you’re using for the computer (in this hypothetical setup)”
You have a very good point here. Despite some lackings that the 2880 has, I think that most likely I will be able to get what I want here by using a midi adapter. However I have two reasons for wanting to think about changing the firmware to add this capability. First, we have now pointed out, there are problems with syncing the 2880 with midi. I have used a synth-side midi out before to try to do this but I just couldn’t get it to work. With the setup I had. There were problems when I changed the tempo as you said, and I never got the two outputs to be perfectly lined up with each other. I am dreaming of either fixing this problem with the midi, or trying to circumvent it with the usb. The other reason that I want to look into this is that I am simply a student that is interested in operating systems. I am curious about how musical real time systems work.
“2 – have you tried doing “instant” program changes with an outboard sequencer at all? no good with the current firmware – it doesn’t change instantly, it ramps up and down on the speed, which screws up your start/end points – they’ll no longer align on the sequencer and the 2880.”
I don’t actually have much experience with using midi with the 2880. The only set up I have ever been able to play with was where the 2880 was the tempo slave. (I have only one midi keyboard and it only has midi input) I was sending the midi out of the 2880 into the keyboard which was in turn read by ableton live. That attempt totally failed. The tempos would never match and there was delay between the two out puts. I was never able to figure out if the 2880 was the culprit with that or not. I am not terribly interesed in making that setup work, given the fact that 2880 temp is controlled with that little slider (suitable for standalone looping but not really as a master control).
That being said, no, I have not tried what you said in point 2. But isn’t what you said motivation to try to improve the firmware?
“3 – have you tried hotswapping loops via USB while the 2880 is playing? playback glitches, the computer reads errors, it’s a mess. No bueno.”
Again I haven’t tried that but I had figured that the 2880 would not be capable of that. I am not to worried about that problem either because I don’t really want to change the data while it is playing. I will always do that between plays. Though it may be an interesting capability, I think that is is probably impossible. Based on the fact that the 2880 does glitch when you mess with the data in the cf card, the 2880 probably only has this card as main memory. I would suspect that the only other form of memory in the 2880 would that which holds the firmware itself (which is probably flash given that we were able to upgrade it.) An interesting though is that the unit might be able to do something like buffer the loop data on the cf card itself, perhaps somehow only making a portion of the card available to the computer connected to the unit via USB for changing the data. This would be a pretty cool upgrade that I didn’t even think about! Another idea I am having is that ability to have multiple loops on one card. It always bothered me a little that you can only have one loop no matter the size on the card.
“4 – Not worth voiding the warranty on a $400/discontinued unit.
Another very good point. I’m quite used to voiding my warantees tho.
Also as long as we are able to upload an old version of the firmware, we should always be able to restore the unit back to former capability.
By the way, who are you? Are you associated with EHX? If so I think it would be so cool if you could hook me up with an engineer or something over there who knows about this. Maybe you could ask someone who was in charge of engineering the 2880 to looking into the people that worked on the firmware for me. Don’t worry about customer satisfaction with this customer here. I already believe that the 2880 is bad ass, and am a fan of EHX. Also I am not that type of kid who takes apart his toys and then crys when they don’t work any more.
October 16, 2012 at 1:52 am #118261CryabetesParticipantMine syncs fine to my sequencer as long as I don’t do dumb things like monkey with tempos mid-song (not really a problem). Did you have Quantize on when you tried to sync yours to your synth/ableton? I don’t really know why they didn’t make quantization the default when using the external clock, I can’t really picture a good reason for not quantizing to the nearest bar when using an outboard clock. Also, did you have ASIO as your sound driver when using Ableton? I know that can cause problems if you’re using … basically anything else. What synth were you using? Were you using the 2880 as the master clock or slaving it to the synth’s tempo? Also with the ableton setup, were you at all able to sync it to the external clock? What model keyboard were you using?
As for me, I’m Sam, just a musician that saved up four hundo and bought one, not associated with EHX any further than these forums. Whereas Ron / Bart / Kitrae / Melx / Fender&EHX4Ever; take care of most of the other pedals, I’m fairly specialized in debugging the headaches the 2880 can cause. I’m also terrible with a soldering iron. I’m totally the kid that takes his toys apart and cries when they don’t fit back together. My music’s pretty alright though.
October 16, 2012 at 2:02 am #118262harlequinMemberDarn! I was really hoping you would be someone who could do that stuff for me. It’s very cool that you are an experienced musician on here helping people out though! Judging by the speed of your responses you are pretty thorough at doing that too.
I don’t really remember what the precise spec were for that setup. It was a long time ago. I have every confidence that if i do have a proper set up in the future that i can get it to work. If I can’t, then I know where to look know!
October 16, 2012 at 2:09 am #118263CryabetesParticipantMost definitely. Come back anytime.
March 5, 2016 at 7:13 pm #121325jayropeMemberThis come sin a bit late, but i saw you’re thread while i am trying to get a grasp on how to hack the 22500 firmware
Was there any real attempts to hacking the 2880 OS and what insights are there now?
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