Since our Fairlight MFX/Fame slowly gets out of date, we had a meeting with some guys from Digidesign UK and Germany. After they introduced and explained their new ICON Controller, one of my questions was: “And where are the surround joysticks?”
Their explenation was surprising me. They told that Harrison/UK (Mixer manufacturer) call it their invention and now (pretty late) have the patent on it. So Digidesign is working on a tochpad control (like laptops have) for the surround placement of the signal.
Wouldn’t that be possible with MBOX as well?
I don’t know about they’ll use regular laptop siced pads or biger ones like graphic pads.
Much too expensive (I need at least 8 pads for controlling X/Y/Z parameters ;D) - especially the RS232 or USB option is not required, only the pad itself is for interest.
Lately I was at a Digidesign D-Control demonstration (they call the controller now “D-Control” and the whole system ProTools/MicPres/Intrefaces is “Icon”). They still didn’t implement the touchpads but the digi-guy showed me the physical sice of the pads with his hands… it seems, they’ll be about 6 Inches of sice.
I am somewhat surprised to see this subject getting new responses. I ordered and started playing with these touchpads several months ago only to find out that an implementation workable with MBOX was already underway and almost finished. So, I abandoned that project. As I recall it was Duggle that had a working prototype.
hello. i’m mostly interested in the touchpad thingie and flex sensors, but also potentiometers and the rest. i’m building a midi controller of some sort and i’m looking for alternative input methods (well touchpad is not THAT alternative
it would be great to get as many different parts as possible to try get them working and decide what suits me best.
by the way - you maybe know where i can buy your products in europe?
and - these will be *free* samples right? do i need to pay the shipping?
thanks for quick response!
regards, jure
and i got 6 flex sensors, one touch-potentiometer and one membrane switch.
I understand the problem with those sensors is that they are “disconnected” once you let go of them.
So if there were a circuit which would let the core know of when we’ve let go of the pad, and when we’re touching it, the core could know when to update the midi controller value.
I thought of this, perhaps it could work…
How I understand those pads (linear ones): when you’re touching one end, the output is shorted with one pin (lessay A). When touching the other end, it’s shorted with pin B. The output changes fluidly between pin A’s and pin B’s voltage.
If we let go nothing is connected to the output pin.
Idea:
put +5V on pin A, +10V on pin B. Connect the output pin through a resistor to 0V. Now, if we touch the pad we get a voltage somewhere between +5 and +10 on the output pin. When not touching the pad, we get 0 volt and we could let the core know that it should remember the last position we have put in by touching the pad.
Will this work?
Of course, it would need a different module than AIN…
Is it worth ordering one of their samples to try this circuit out? Or is there some basic flaw I’m overlooking?
