Hi All,
I’ve just come across the holy grail of button parts!
http://www.mpcstuff.com/pad-sensors-with-ribbon-for-mpc.html
and
http://www.mpcstuff.com/akai-mpc-pad-set-grey.html
So who is going to be first?
I’ve just come across the holy grail of button parts!
I think you might have!
Ohhh… Ouch $90 a set 
I wonder if we could find a way to get those PCBs made cheaper?
I’m unsure how easy it would be to make the sensor sheet, remember that MPC pads are velocity sensitive. The contact arrangment suggest to me that the sensors work something like pizeo sensors. If it was a straight switching mechanism i would have thought each pad would need three contacts to transmit velocity?
Ahhhh… Velocity sensitive 
That makes the price make sense
They might be FSRs?
I did some work on a broken MPC2000 I owned for about a month (store sold it to me saying it worked, it actually had pins on the RAM SIMM shorted together, which I fixed.. and then noticed there was a crack down the daughterboard I had to point-to-point solder across). I wish I still had my notes, because I had sketched out most of the circuitry connected to the button sensors.
IIRC the supporting circuitry was based around two amplification chips that each had two amplification channels, and would switch on columns (so one amp chip took care of the top two rows, the other chip the bottom two.) I can try to get part numbers but the computer I was doing this research on is no longer working.
Hm… looks nice, but indeed… 90 bucks phew… I mean that’s nearly 1/3 the price of a fully assembled microKONTROL and there you have the same but illuminated (16 velocity sensitive pads) plus case, encoders, sliders, joystick and keyboard.
and: you need 16 AINs. Another question is if the resistance is in a useful range for MBHP to be directly connected to the AINputs.
I know this is a bit offtopic, but I have the impression that the button pads at sparkfun are now cheapter than before?
Not velocity sensitive but illuminateable
And maybe one could mount additional FSRs below the pcb… just a thought…
Cheers,
Michael
I know this is a bit offtopic, but I have the impression that the button pads at sparkfun are now cheapter than before?
…quote from the site:
I KNEW they’d do that! A few stories on Make and CDM later, costs are covered, price comes down…
Edit: Quantity on hand: 6. Damn. Get in there guys!
hi
i had a look into my microkontrol and i can tell you the way it is about those velocity sensitive buttons, i bet it works the same way on the MPC.
Above the 16 button pads (or better on the other side of the PCB) there are 4 piezo elements, glued on the PCB, 1 each 4 buttons.So the buttons are both normal switches AND piezo, therefore they can easily avoid cross triggering and they can be used in both ways: you strike a button, the software knows that that button is related to that piezo and it will combine a MIDI event with the proper velocity.
It doesn t look so difficult to create such a system, we only need some code to combine the value coming from the piezo together with pushed button, maybe it is time to cooperate with Admir at edrum.info ? I imagine that with those spark fun buttons we could recreate something similar to Microkontrol or MPC.
Or better, we can do it better!! Homemade silicone/plastic buttons velocity sensitive, wow!
I think i will post also in the edrum forum and see what they say over there.
cheers
simone
hey it s my birthday!!
hey, congrats mate
the software should be no problem; The biggest problem may be to get the right buttons fitting mechanically and having good grip and transparency – for a reasonable price.
Cheers,
Michael
txxx
has anybody tried those sparkfun buttons? i will get that silicone stuff in 10 days (after Roskilde Festivalen!) then i only need a negative moulding box.. any idea?
simone (yeah getting older)
please see this thread at edrum.info:
Just a side note, I’ve got myself an MPC2500 now. The Pads are also pressure sensitive
Have you seen this encoder on mpcstuff.com? for $14 ???
Well, Im sure its not optical. Bastards!
http://www.mpcstuff.com/rotary-encoder-for-mpc-2000-xl–jog-wheel-p.html
14 $ ??? ??? ??? ??? that s 20 times the value maybe more…
so i realized that the eDrum.info project is not open source so no way, but somebody said he d be able to program this stuff, do you think we can use the eDrum hardware for this purpose?
simone
Here is a site with some very useful info for those that are interested
Thank you Rowan. This guy sells only pads, and for normal price 15$
These look like the business
http://cui.com/adtemplate.asp?invky=638255&catky=560054&subcatky1=895884&subcatky2=&subcatky3=