Ensoniq Control 16 Undressed
by matt on Aug.16, 2009, under Hardware Pr0n
I bought an Ensoniq Control 16 off Trademe cause it was going for fairly cheap relative to new control surfaces. The problem with the Control 16 is that it is designed to only work with a proprietary PCI card from PARIS. So I am planning on reverse engineering it and building a USB adaptor. First things first, though, it needed to be disassembled so I can reverse engineer the circuit. Here are some pix for those who are interested.
Control 16 - Before Disassembly
Control 16 - Rear panel
Control 16 Regulator/IO Board
Control 16 - I/O Regulator Board (Underside)
Control 16 - Undressed
Control 16 - Up Close
Control 16 - The Brains
Control 16 Rotary Encoder
Control 16 Slider ICs
Control 16 - Misc ICs
6 Comments for this entry
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Ensoniq Control 16 RJ-45 Connector Pinout - ElectricRock Blog
September 16th, 2009 on 3:59 pm[...] matt on Sep.16, 2009, under Informational As I stated in my first Control 16 post, the C16 is meant to connect to a proprietary Ensoniq PCI card (which I don’t have.) So [...]
May 17th, 2010 on 6:47 pm
Hi Matt I too have a C16 I would like to use with my computer. Have you made any real headway with this idea? Very interested in this topic.
May 17th, 2010 on 9:23 pm
Hi Michael. Cool to hear that someone else is interested in using the C16. If you look at my other posts, to get it working with PC I had to program the microcontroller on the C16 mainboard with a custom firmware. With that done, and after building an adapter to plug it into the serial port, it is mostly usable (some of the knobs don’t work though.) The main bit of work that is yet to be done is to write a program that converts the serial data that it transmits (in a custom packet format that I defined) into MIDI (e.g. emulating the Mackie Control protocol) so that it can be used with DAW software. I have been too busy for the last few months to do this, but coincidentally had begun to look into this a couple of days ago. Basically, if you’re interested in this, you’ll probably have to get your hands dirty with a bit of soldering and hardware work. But if you’re keen to do it I’m happy to provide help based on my experiences.
February 3rd, 2011 on 6:32 am
Hey Matt, great to see someone working on this. I have a PARIS system I’m still actively using, and I’m actually looking to wirelessly-enable my Control 16 and Control 16 Pro, so your work here is invaluable. Have you made any progress documenting the transmit protocol at all, or is that outside the scope of what you’re doing?
Thanks,
mattcelt
February 3rd, 2011 on 8:59 am
That sounds cool. I didn’t document the original protocol as I didn’t have the PCI card that the C16 communicates with, so couldn’t just sniff the communications between the two. However, I imagine a wireless bridge could be built relatively easily without knowing the protocol. Since the signaling is RS422, it would simply be a matter of building or buying a bi-directional wireless bridge for RS-422, or repurposing an RS-232 one. Anyway, it sounds like an interest project, and I’d be keen to hear more if you go ahead with it.
March 4th, 2011 on 7:47 pm
Hey Matt, I’m still working on it. I have the EDS cards for the console… what data could I sniff from the wire that would help you get more information? I’m afraid to plug the cable into a sniffer with that 12v connection lurking in there – I just don’t know enough about serial protocols to know if that’s within tolerable limits.
March 5th, 2011 on 11:34 pm
Hey,
What tool are you using for sniffing?
The communication between the EDS card and the console is RS-422 (so basically a ±5v differential pair in each direction). First you need to work out the baudrate and packet format (one would assume 8N1 as this is typical for serial ports), if you have a scope that would make this a lot easier.
Once you have that information, the best thing to do would be to sniff the packets going in both directions simultaneously so that you can record what the EDS card sends to the console while at the same time recording what the console sends back to the card. If you want, I can draw up a schematic for a sniffer that would do this.
Cheers