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Thorben Zethoff edited this page Dec 28, 2020 · 2 revisions

Quick intro to the configuration software

Software screenshot

  • The are marked in red is the device tree. Here all devices will be listed, settings can be viewed and Coil & Midi-Maps can be added.
    • To expand or retract items that contain more options, click the little circle on the left of the item.
  • green on the bottom is marked the status bar, a (for now quite useless 😋) box that shows the operation the program is currently performing and it's progress
  • the blue area is where settings will be shown, once a device is selected.

To get started, click on the first device (The item that has the USB Synthesizer icon and the text midi-stick).

Configuring synthesizer parameters

The Synthesizer menu

You should now see this menu. Here you are able to adjust all parameters that are not affected by coil presets or midi programms. For now you'll probably only want to check that the "Aux mode" is set to aux output (the option where it sends the same signal to the aux connector as to the Coil), as setting it to the E-Stop option will prevent any output, unless a switch is connected.

Next expand the Synthesizer item in the device overview. Then try to expand the "coil configs" item, if the expand button isn't there, select and then right click on the "coil configs" item and click on "Add new Coil".

Adding a coil config

Coil config Now you should see something like this, go ahead and select the config. On the right side of the windows you can now adjust the limiting parameters of this preset. As with the synthesizer options, most should be useable with their default value, but I do recommend checking that the on-time and maximum duty cycle is within the safe operating area of your Tesla coil.

Once you are happy with the settings, click the "Save changes to device" Button. The config entry has now switched to the default selected color, and the other items in the device tree are no longer orange, indicating that there are no more unsaved changes.

Now to activate the preset that we have just created, right click on it in the device tree and select "Set as active config". The preset is now colored green to indicate it is the currently active one.

getting a first sound

Your stick is now set up to play notes, so go ahead and open something like VMPK to test it out.

To tell the software that you want the tone to come from the synthesizer you'll have to tell it to send the data to the correct midi output. Unfortunately this is different with every software, so I can't really help with that. In VMPK the setting is under [top bar] Edit > Midi Connections > Output MIDI Connection (you might have to change the MIDI OUT Driver to Windows MM first, if there are just numbers in the list).

Now hit play, or press on a key and you'll hear the first sound 😁 If you loaded the example VMS config (which also comes pre-loaded on new sticks) you can also change through the midi programs (the instrument selection) and get different sounds from the stick.

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