How can I emulate Audio Electronics with Flowstone

[rdgaudio]

Since I am an Electronics engineer my brain always thinks for Audio electronics . Flowstone is my favourite VPL software for Audio VST. But I don't know Flowstone very well and I am using and learning this beautiful VPL software for last 19 days. My question is How can I emulate an electronic circuit with Flowstone?. For example, I have made a simple Saw tooth p to P wave generator circuit with IC NE 555. Now, how can I emulate this with Flowstone? In other words how can I use octave/matlab or Lab view,simulink along with Flowstone ? Now a days I am spending my 80% times with Flowstone.


Once I will learn the technique I will emulate all my electronics circuit with Flowstone.
Cheers!!
Rudra Ghosh

[martinvicanek]

You would have to translate the circuit into code, but that's usually not very efficient. For instance, it would be much easier to compute the saw straight away.

[BobF]

Hello rdgaudio,

To get a ruff idea what you can do as far as the 555 timer goes, do a search for "The 555 timer". I made this awhile back and got the rc circuits from Martin.

Looking forward at seeing your circuits down the road. Good luck, BobF.....

[rdgaudio]

Thank you BobF sir, I have watched your post. viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5999&p=28543&hilit=555+timer#p28543
And here I have recorded a screen cast with your project
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYc5yfXOC_w

But my question is, how to emulate 'Saw' in Flowstone from NE 555? What you have designed is a Pulse wave generating circuit. Primarily NE 555 gives pulse wave. Switch on/off over times that is why it's widely used in Traffic signals,vibrator circuit,LED Blinking etc. But to get Saw waveform we have to use PNP transistors,Rectifier (diodes) and Zener diodes along with Capacitors and Resistors. So,how can I achieve these in Flowstone? Guide me.
Cheers!!
Rudra Ghosh

[Spogg]

I also come from an analogue and digital electronics background (I’m 63) and have learnt the hard way that Flowstone is very different and requires its own approach. Yes, you have a range of “components” to use, the prims and modules, but no, you have to largely abandon the electronics metaphor.

I would say it’s much better to learn about what is available and how these components can work together, rather than imposing a pre-conceived notion on what “SHOULD” happen.

Where a background in electronic construction of synths and effects IS useful is for the appreciation of control signals, signal flow paths and signal manipulations, like clipping, filtering and so on.

So I would say you need to think kinda top down. Get the overview of what you want, the block diagram, then find out how to get the functions you need. This last step is normally different to electronics since, in the background, there is step-wise code running and this behaves very differently to electronics. Flowstone does all the coding for you but you still need to be aware that it’s still code and not voltage levels.

As an example, in Flowstone you can make a sawtooth signal using a sample-based counter whose step size relates to the note pitch; a higher pitch required causes larger size steps and the counter to reach a threshold faster. In electronics you may use an integrator and reset it at a certain fixed level of the ramp. In Flowstone if you do this for the counter the counter may frequently miss the exact threshold value and so count past it. So you then use a greater-than function but because the counter is running in quantised steps, not like a smooth voltage, the step prior to the threshold will not always be the same value for all frequencies, since there can be a miss-match (inexact ratio) between the fixed sample rate (the “clock”) and the frequency generated. This will lead to horrible dissonant frequencies being added (aliasing) which you just don’t get with analogue electronics.

It is possible (as BobF has shown) to replicate digital logic functions in Flowstone and use these as building blocks but they don’t use emulations of transistor switches. They aim to copy the actual logic relationships between inputs and outputs.

In conclusion, Flowstone is NOT an electronics workbench emulator and so needs to be seen for what it actually is: a way of visually combining representations of blocks of code. So for me it makes little sense to ask “How can I make a resistor or capacitor in flowstone” since the function of such components will vary enormously based on what they would be doing. It’s what they would be doing in your idea that is important, not the components themselves.

Sorry if the above sounds a bit preachy! Just trying to help.

Have fun!

Spogg

[rdgaudio]

"Sorry if the above sounds a bit preachy!.."No no sir,not at all. You are 63 and I am just 28,so I always respect you from my heart.I do respect your experience.Even I respect all FS members. I am using FS just for 20 days. I am trying to learn this giant software. Mainly I am learning from reverse engineering (other users FSM project files). I am not complaining but sincerely the user manual is very brief and it's not a very good place to learn Flowstone. After 19 days I had no idea about what FS is capable of. I saw youtube videos on "Arduino Graphical Programming with FlowStone" that's why I thought it might emulate too. Honestly, I had no idea. Now I have got my answer "Flowstone is NOT an electronics workbench emulator" .
Big SORRY,Sorry for my weird and silly question.
Thanks,
Rudra

[Spogg]

Absolutely no need to say sorry!

As a teacher once said to me "There's no such thing as a stupid question, only a stupid answer".

Glad that I've clarified stuff a bit. This has come up before actually, so I hope future members will see your post and the responses here.

I agree the manual is very brief and limited and I think your approach of taking apart others' projects, whilst referring to the manual, is excellent. I say that because that's what I did initially I Still have to check back sometimes. Always something new to learn.

Cheers

Spogg

[rdgaudio]

Thank you Sir. That means you are not angry with me.!! Actually I feel bad when I do crazy things. As you all know young brain is different than a mature brain.It thinks it can do anything,thinks twice with out knowing many things. But a mature brain always guides the young brain.
You are my Hero and Guru.
By the way do not think you are 63. Think you are just 36. This is good for mind and health.
Just kidding...
Take care Sir.

[pshannon]

Since I am an Electronics engineer my brain always thinks for Audio electronics . Flowstone is my favourite VPL software for Audio VST. But I don't know Flowstone very well and I am using and learning this beautiful VPL software for last 19 days. My question is How can I emulate an electronic circuit with Flowstone?. For example, I have made a simple Saw tooth p to P wave generator circuit with IC NE 555. Now, how can I emulate this with Flowstone? In other words how can I use octave/matlab or Lab view,simulink along with Flowstone ? Now a days I am spending my 80% times with Flowstone.


Once I will learn the technique I will emulate all my electronics circuit with Flowstone.
Cheers!!
Rudra Ghosh

I am working on the same thing, I have already started emulating several integrated circuits, working on a capacitor and transistor. I have a version of the 555 timer, but the -q/discharge is my roadblock right now. I am trying to use DSP as much as possible for speed and limit the amount of ruby. The one limitation I see, everything will technically be positive polarity, because of the in and out design of Flowstone. I think BI-lateral might be very difficult, but I have not tried to solve that issue yet.

Since you are an at the Electrical engineering level, you should have more knowledge than me on the the subject. But I like logic circuits to simulate BITs and Flip Flops ect.

Maybe we need a brainstorm session.

Regards,

QuadBIT

[pshannon]

I just thought of another difficult thing to replicate in FS with electronics, not saying impossible. Parallel circuits with the path of least resistance. I have some ideas on how this might be done. I started thinking to myself, there comes a point where you just realize the application is just not designed for that, it might be able to emulate some of it, but not everything. It comes to a point where it is just too much work or workarounds to accomplish this and it is still not 100% possible to make it work the way you expect it too. You would have to bend your way of thinking to make emulation work to the application capabilities and not the other way. I do however think FS can handle logic circuits almost flawlessly. I am working on many types of gates and original chipsets from TI. I will share soon, but not sure if it is a value to anyone else but myself. I found out after I started that someone else did a few of these. The main difference, I will truly try to replicate the actual IC chips that exist today and build off the logic gates off of them.

QuadBIT