I’ve finally reached a new point in the developpement of my “Arkade” controller (after several monthes of standby) based on the <soooo amazing> MBH platform, thanks to T.K.
A friend of a friend of (… you know the story) recently made me the front pannel at his work. I’m quite pround of the design 8) and I have to say that he did a very good work indeed !!!
Even if the box isn’t closed yet, I already mounted quite a lot of the definitive stuff that will be embeded (sorry if the english expressions do not match the french ones ;)). Here are some pitcures of this toy :
NorthernLightX : I’m affraid not (quite hard work as he told me, now I gotta find some kind of big present for the guy, hey he deserves it !! ) I like your nickname btw 8)
There are 2 distance sensors like D-Beam, working very reactive + 2 ribbon controllers :1 horizontal below the two joysticks + 1 vertical on the extreme left (not on the pictures yet)
The 2 buttons rows on the right pane come from my old non-working DX7 (power circuit had melted), as both weels do (modulation + bend, as you can see only 1 is mounted).
Gotta find time to finish this up but I only got my magic pannel since few days …
I hope everything will be gathered in a week or two (busy days >:( …)
Sasha : it’s the light, in fact it’s standard light grey.
The application I have in mind is a simple one : a basic MIDI controller, except that the controllers themselves are quite unusual (infrared distance to play with your hands, joysticks, ribbons, …). Another idea is to easily send program changes from it (caus’ it’s soo annoying to do it with the mouse) : with the Arkade you can do that either with a wheel (dedicated to program changes), with buttons, or even with a foot switch pedal connected on the rear panel (I’m using a -1/+1 pedal coming from the bundle of an old Behringer V-Amp2), plus you get an expression pedal input also (I’m using the MAudio one, works like a charm). To sum up the concept, I would say I wanted to maximize the number of cc you can handle with your human capacities (2 hands busy on the joysticks = 4 CC + feet …) Great for sound design or even live performances in my opinion …
And finally I’ve always wanted such a device and could never find one from any manufacturer … so I did it myself
The two extra joysticks on the right come from a Playstation handle 8) they got the advantage of returning to the central X/Y position when released (+ no cost as the handle was broken). I labeled them “Player #2” on the panel, as you can for instance have your favorite buddy making sound design on another track while you play with the first pair of joysticks yourself
In fact even if the concept in itself is quite simple, I spent quite a lot of time integrating those unusual controllers onto the AIN module (because of electronic noise + flickering pbs). I had to find the right values for the bypass capacitors + some tricky lines of code (search for “MIDI gate” on the forums, there was an earlier post about all this).
I also planned to use one of the squared buttons to make MIDI gates / freezes manually with different modes. The advantage of such buttons is they are very loose and you can be very fast with them
I have bought the banksticks but I still have to buy the circuit board to mount them on, cauz at the time I bought the banksticks it was not available … so all this thing is not completely over (but I’m probaly entering the best part now ;D 8))
Goule, thanks for the quick answer… too bad that color is not champagne, but still looks great! I personally have so much trouble finding anodizing service, or anodized aluminum locally. :-\
I know about them, but they are pretty expensive. I could do it much cheaper locally if I found some anodizing service, or I could just order plain plate from them and CNC it here.
Here is a new set of pictures I took yesterday. Everything is now connected, up and running, and I have to say it works very well with any software; I tried it with Kontakt, works like a charm; I’ve tried it with a few VSTis and it’s also very accurate. The big plus about the ribbon controlers is that they can send note on messages so you don’t even need a master keyboard to make sound design.
My own personal christmas tree ;D
I still have to solder and plug the BankStick + the USB connector (which I will to take power from, cause I got a flexible stage light I’d light to add).
Olivier, your Arcade looks so nice! The only think that somehow dont fit in the rest of the design is those ribbons. They are great, but the way they are mounted looks kinda unfinished and not in same quality rang as the rest of controller. They looks like a sticker. What do you think? Maybe you could make some frame around it to hide those edges. If I was you, I would make same thing as you did for display, so ribon could be glued on the sub-panel. Similar as on Korg Electribe.
I would really like to see it in action, especially those ribbons. YouTube is great place for that, feel invited! ;D
Sasha : I agree with you about that ribbons; at first sight they give some old-style look to the machine. For sure, a sub pannel would have been nice to hide the sides of the ribbons (btw I owned a Korg Electribe which is a great machine hehe), but I’m now in the process of finishing it and I won’t make some extra drilling to the pannel. Now I’m quite accustomed to the way it looks as it is.
I was thinking about making a little demonstration video to give an idea of how it works … so as soon as it’s done I’ll post the link here.
