Building the Ekano.

Skills you might need.

Required:
Soldering

You need to be good in soldering - having build or repaired a guitar pedal before definitely helps. This being said, soldering the Ekano is not more complicated than building a simple fuzz. You don't even have to put components on a circuit board (That's right, there is no additional PCB required!)

Required:
3D-Printing

You can 3D-print the complete enclosure. All required files can be downloaded from this website.

Even if you buy a ready-made metal enclosure, you still need to 3D-print some small parts, especially the frame to hold the Arduino in place and give you access to it's USB-Port from the outside of the enclosure.

Optional:
Metal working

You can order a ready-made metal enclosure from Tayda or make one yourself. If you choose to make one from a blank enclosure you need to be good in metal working.

Optional: Programming

If you want to use the Ekano with the provided banks with your HX Stomp, you dont have to be able to program Arduino. The software can be downloaded, you just have to upload it to your Arduino Board using the free Arduino IDE. This is easy and very well documented.

If you want to go a step further and customize the default settings (e.g. change your preferred Preset Numbers), you will have to alter the code. It's still easy.

Eventually, you can fully customize the code to your preferences. After all, the code is very structured, just find the correct line in the code for a specific event (e.g. "a long press for stomp B") and write down the midi command you want to send (which is basically a couple of numbers you can look up).

Check the programming section of this website for more details.

Build Instructions.

Get the Arduino and the display up and running.

Before you start: try to upload a sample to the Arduino (e.g. the “Blink” Sample that comes with the IDE – sometimes, it can be tricky to get everything configured right in terms of USB-cables that don’t work, COM-Port-guessing, or choosing the wrong Board and Bootloader).

If you can crimp, do it: Crimp 22 cm long wires (red, black, green, blue) and push them in a 4-pole dupont enclosure. If you don’t have the tools to crimp, you can also use the female ends of four separate jumper cables (I recommend to use the same color code for the cables).

Solder the driver (black PCB) onto the Display (green PCB), if it didn't come already assembled (mine obviously didn't).

Solder the crimped driver cable to the Arduino (see schematic below). If you use jumper cables, cut off the ends on the Arduino Side and solder the cables to the Arduino.

Install the Libraries: In the Arduino IDE, navigate to Sketch > Include Library > Add .ZIP Library. At the top of the drop down list, select the option to "Add .ZIP Library''.

Upload the Ekano code to the Arduino (use the same configuration and cable You used above (The display can stay attached during the upload).

If you cannot read anything, the display brightness needs to be adjusted using the blue trim pot on the driver – if everything went well, the display text should look similar to the one on the image below – congrats!

Prepare Midi, Power and the Arduino.

Prepare the Midi Jack with resistors, cables and shrink tube.

Next, solder the diode to the power jack for reverse polarity protection. In the picture, I already put shrink tube over the diode. Do not solder the black wire to the jack yet (sorry for the picture), we will do that later. Just the diode, red wire and shrink tube for now.

Not my favorite part: Wiring the Arduino. See schematics above for details. Do not connect the Midi jack yet!

Mount the Switches and the Display.

Now we solder a black daisy chain for all the ground connections of the Ekano. Watch out for the details - sometimes more than two wires have to be soldered together. In the picture you can see, that starting on the right side we have

Node 1: The open end at the very right (close to the tip of the blade) (will later be soldered to the power jack)
Node 2: Two wires (will later be soldered to footswitch C)
Node 3: Two wires (will later be soldered to footswitch B)
Node 4: Three wires (including the remaining black wire coming from the arduino) (will later be soldered to footswitch A)
Node 5: Two wires (will later be soldered to footswitch D)
Node 6: Two wires (will later be soldered to footswitch E)
Node 7: The other open end (will later be soldered to footswitch F)

Now we solder that chain to the switches: A very easy way is to put the switches upside down in the top of the enclosure (if you havent printed it yet, this would be a good time). You might even consider using the nuts from the inside of the enclosure to hold the switches in place.

Next, solder the coloured wires from the arduino to the correct switches.

Before you mount the switches from the inside, I recommend to put the lock nut for the stomps in the front row (D, E, F) in the middle of the thread, so these stoms are a bit lower than the ones in the rear (A, B, C). For these, put the lock nut to the very bottom of the thread.

Put the switches inside of the enclosure.

...and add the display.

Add Power and Midi Jacks.

Mount the power jack from the outside of the enclosure and solder the red wire to the Arduino. Solder the remaining black wire coming from switch C to the power Jack. Watch the polarity - the picture shows the wiring for the regular Pedalboard 9V DC power supplies (center negative).

Mount the Midi Jack from the outside of the enclosure and solder the orange, grey and yellow wire to the Arduino.

Add the Arduino.

Slide the Arduino into the 3D-printed frame...

...and mount it to the back side of the enclosure. Connect the display to the arduino (with the dupont jack you crimped earlier). The black wire (gnd) goes to the rear of the enclosure!

Here is a nice detail: The lid of the enclosure comes with a hole to be able to change the brightness of the display without opening the enclosure. For this, it might be helpful to put the wires (orange, grey, yellow) coming from the midi jack below the dupont jack from the display.

Completed Build.

Send some Midi.

Connect to your midi device and check with the Ekano default bank, if the switches create midi signals.

If you use an HX Stomp, here ist how to set it up to work with the default bank:

Buttons for "Preset Up" and "Preset Down" as well as buttons for "Snapshot 1-3" should work immediately.

Button “C” is labeled “solo” and toggles the Midi CC-Message “11” between the values “0” and “127”.

You will have to configure your HX Stomp to do something with that. Check the "Programming" Section for details on how to do that.

Legal, License and Support Stuff.

No direct support is offered beyond the provided documentation. It is assumed that you have at least some experience building pedals before starting this project. I have in good faith tested the provided circuits and programs.

Everything provided with this product is released under a creative commoms license (SA, ShareAlike). What that means? Check here for further information.

Some of the images on this website are provided by unsplash under the unsplash license.

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