[chipweinberger]

I'll be sticking around in the comments so feel free to ask questions. AMA!

[shizcakes]

What are some examples of good anti-counterfeit strategies? And, if you’re comfortable, which applied for JamCorder?

[etrautmann]

+1

[rwmj]

The number that stuck out was 200K lines of code. Can you expand on why so much code had to be written and which parts were the longest (time and/or code) and hardest bits?

[chipweinberger]

The app is about 85K lines: device connectivity, first-time setup, syncing, MIDI playback and visualization, library management, audio/video export, and OTA workflows.

The firmware is about 110K lines: MIDI recording + streaming, USB, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, web APIs, storage, OTA updates, diagnostics, security, peripherals, provisioning, and an embedded web interface.

There’s a lot required to make a full-featured product.

[lukeweston1234]

This seems like an incredibly large codebase. Did you use an existing RTOS or something similar for this product, or was this all hand rolled?

[bonzini]

What is the manufacturing tooling that you mention?

[chipweinberger]

3 main components: flashing, provisioning keys, hardware testing.

Nearly every component gets tested: sdcard, clock, battery, anti-counterfeit IC, led, buzzer, the tactile-switch!

[junon]

Yeesh, please tell me you didn't write all of that yourself. Which uC is it targeting, and which language?

[cazum]

From the photo in the link it looks like he's using an esp32-s3.

I suspect that 110k number might include the ESP-IDF libraries as well as his own code.

I've written a fairly feature-complete handheld device based on the esp32-s2 and the codebase is about 9k sloc of the C I've written, but that number explodes to almost 40k sloc if I include the esp-idf's imported libraries.

[chipweinberger]

These numbers do not include ESP-IDF :)

[msandford]

I recognize the "esp32 perched on top of a circuit board" from the picture. I've got a couple of those at my house right now, I'm on the second version of one board and the third of another. I think I'm going down a very similar road for a different product. Would you be willing to some paid advising? I'm an EE so I don't need hand-holding on the actual boards or programming, really just looking for more information on everything else around the edges. Either way, thanks for the article. It was nice to get some validation of my development process.

[iamflimflam1]

I can/try to give you some advice if you need - email is in my bio. I did a semi successful CrowdSupply project based around the ESP32S3.

[hasbot]

Have you considered supporting other MIDI instruments like e-drums and pad controllers?

[chipweinberger]

They should just work! You can replace the soundfont that the app uses with your own too.

[discordance]

Really cool project. As someone from the software side who is just getting into hardware, this is very inspiring!

How did you find customers?

How did you get your hardware design verified?

[8bitsrule]

Interested. I got far emough on the site to have a couple of questions. (Maybe the answers are on the site?)

1) Does device record ALL MIDI sent to it? (Including e.g. SYSEX and non-registered parameters?

2) I edit MIDI on a Desktop (NOT a phone). a) Are sessions recorded into separate files? Named and/or dated? b) Can I inspect & load sessions from the card?

[raphman]

The website gives a very nice and captivating intro to the device.

But why do you spell MIDI in lowercase there?

> plugs into your piano via midi

[chipweinberger]

The marketing answer: all lower-case looks modern and opinionated

The real answer: I got tired of deciding what should and shouldn't be capitalized. Sounds easy but it gets ambiguous fast.

I'll revisit this decision at some point. Capital letters do make reading easier.

[lifeisstillgood]

>>> Have a strong anti-counterfeit strategy. Don’t overlook this.

Can you expand? What counterfeits do you see (literally someone selling boxes labelled jamcorder? How do you handle that? Lots of scanning amazon and sending cease desist letter?

[logifail]

Is the app Apple-only?

[chipweinberger]

Android too! Built with Flutter. Flutter is great highly recommend it.