DIY R-BUS cable for 20€
Looking on the internet for the Roland R-Bus cable RBC-1, RBC-3 or RBC-5?
Finally found them and then looking for air because of the prices…happened to me also.
Then I found the pinout of VS-planet and decided to create one myself. I bought a 2nd hand DB25 cable and two breakout boxes male pins.
In one hour I had my own working R-Bus cable for only 20€ 🙂
Here the pinout which you will need! I created in Excel my own list based on the colours of my cable. Of course you can select any color as long a you connect the correct numbers. (link to the original post from 2003 – http://bit.ly/2ovlVF6)
Good luck on rolling your own cable!
Grtzzz, Roger
3 Comments
Frank Rubio
On the homemade RBus cable what end goes to which component. I am using it to connect an SI-24 to a VS 2480
Roger, TMM
Hi!
The homemade cable has on both ends the same connector so it doesn’t matter which one you connect. Can’t go wrong.
Only this is that the SI-24 is especially made for the VS-2400CD.
I know you can route the 8 inputs through RBUS.
I had one too but it didn’t work for me how I wanted because my both RBUS connections are used for the MV8 and the XV-5080.
So again, no difference between the connectors of the homemade cable.
Good luck!
Hope this helps.
Grtzzz,
Roger
Robert
Here’s the pin usage as seen from the female socket on a device:
1 +5V
2 Out 1/2
3 Out 3/4
4 Out 5/6
5 –
6 Out 7/8
7 –
8 In 7/8
9 –
10 In 5/6
11 In 3/4
12 In 1/2
13 –
14 TXD
15 GND
16 GND
17 GND
18 Clock Out
19 GND
20 GND
21 Clock In
22 GND
23 GND
24 GND
25 RXD
The GND’s are internally connected. If the cable is very short, only one GND is needed, but as the cable get longer, GND’s are there to “shield” the clocks.
“-” meaning “No Connection”. These are reserved for other usage, but could be ignored for a standard R-Bus cable (e.g. VM-xxx to VSR-880, etc.).
TXD and RXD act as communication and identification of devices as well as transport layer for “Kind-Of”-MIDI-connection.
The out’s and in’s numbers can vary. They are basically AES/EBU protocol based, but with different voltage levels and some variations.
Clocks can be made unidirectional, if one device act as the clock master.
Regards,
Robert