Tag: arduino

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USB Footswitch

I made a USB Footswitch. Someone got in touch with me and wanted a button that could work with QLab and that they could easily trigger with their foot. I designed and printed an enclosure and I made it pretty darn solid. I’ve stood on it and it hasn’t broken yet.

You can find this USB Footswitch on Etsy if you want or need one. It can be programmed to do pretty much anything you could do with a computer keyboard, and it can alternately work as a USB MIDI device. Which, as long as you need only one button, might be useful!

Here’s a shoe for scale. It’s a shoe that belongs to my wife. I asked her if I could borrow a shoe and she didn’t even want to know what I was using it for. Anyway, it shows how you might trigger the button with your foot.

There’s a port for a Micro USB cable, and you’ll get a 6 foot USB cable with it. You could use a 10 or 15 foot cable if you have one, or use a pair of USB over Ethernet if you want to go even further. Maybe your computer is in another room, or another part of the building. Maybe it’s in the control room and you’re in the booth. I don’t know.

Those rubber feet on the bottom should prevent it from sliding around. It’s also fairly heavy for its size, so that should help it from sliding around. Stay put, footswitch!

Here’s a computerized rendering of the device. I model everything I 3D print using OpenSCAD because I love it.

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MIDI Controller 4 Button LC

I was contacted by someone who really liked the Four Button MIDI Box I had built but was hoping for a less expensive version, so I built one. The Four Button MIDI Box had some specific design requirements regarding size and power, which made it more expensive, but this version (dubbed “LC” for “Low Cost”) does not have such constraints, uses a different source of power, and different components.

This one actually gets power via Micro USB, so any old cheap phone charger should work just fine. Also, while this specific one only does MIDI out via the 5 Pin DIN port, it is capable of doing MIDI out via USB as well. In fact, it can send different data out of the DIN port and the USB port if desired, which is kind of cool.

I usually start these kinds of projects doing some simple sketches to get an idea of size & scale of things. Once the customer and I agree on things I do a 3D model of the enclosure so it can be 3D printed.

It usually take between two and three prints to get it perfect. Sometimes I just do partial prints of certain parts (like the holes for the jacks) to make sure it’s all good. This time I did the math wrong so I did three prints to get things perfect. (I also printed a spare right away in case it was needed.)

I’m pretty happy about how this one turned out. Leaving a bit more room for wiring inside the enclosure really helps. I also used silicone wiring which is more flexible and easy to shove into place. In fact, I may build another one right away and add it to the shop in case someone else wants one.

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Sync a Behringer TD-3 to a Pocket Operator

Last year I wrote up Syncing a Behringer RD-6 to a Pocket Operator via a Pi Pico which was more of a “wow, this works!” thing than a good explanation. I say that because a few people thought it was nice, but didn’t quite understand it, or wanted a diagram, so here’s a diagram…

The 1/8″ stereo jack on the left is where you plug in the Pocket Operator, and the 1/8″ stereo jack on the right goes to the device you want to sync up. (A Behringer RD-6 or TD-3 for example.) The ring/red is the audio side of things, the tip/orange is the click/sync signal put out by the PO, and sleeve/black is the common ground.

As previously mentioned, the Pocket Operators are awesome, and they can sync with each other, but can’t always sync with other devices. They put out a 1 volt signal for the sync track (the “click”) and most other electronic devices want something higher, like 2.5 volts, or 5 volts. The Behringer RD-6 wants over 2.5 volts, so you cannot sync it to a Pocket Operator, but now you can with this device!

This basically reads the 1 volt from the Pocket Operator, and then outputs 5 volts that the Behringer RD-6 can recognize as a sync in signal. While the RD-6 has a sync out port, there are reasons you may want to have the PO be the primary and the RD-6 be the secondary. There’s also the Behringer TD-3, which (oddly enough) does not have a sync out port.

A guy named Oscar got in touch and asked if this worked with the TD-3 and at the time I didn’t have one. Well, I have one now, and it works great. And since the TD-3 does not have a sync out port (!?!?) this is the only way (without additional hardware) to sync a TD-3 to a PO.

I built one (using a Nano, not an Uno) and I’m sending it to Oscar to test out. He’ll need to provide a USB power source and a splitter cable to get it working. (He’s got both already. Most Pocket Operator nerds probably do.)

I did make one mistake on this device… I actually incorporated labels into the enclosure. I for “In” and O for “Out” and when assembling it I didn’t notice I had it backwards until testing. Oops! So I just stuck some labels on the top, and now In is on the right and Out is on the left. If I make another, I’ll do it right next time. Oh, I also realized I could probably just build a splitter into it by adding another jack, so I may do that as well. (Though that will increase the size of the enclosure a bit.)

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S3 Game Controller

Here’s another custom controller that was requested by someone. They were interested in the S1 Rotary Controller but wanted three knobs, and wanted potentiometers instead of encoders. No problem!

The main edit to the S1 was to widen the device to accommodate three knobs instead of one.

Here’s a photo of the device in use that I got from the customer. It’s attached to his larger game controller with some 3M double sided tape and it controls the X,Y,Z axes for the flight simulation game IL-2 Sturmovik.

Enjoy the renders below.

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Four Button MIDI Box

A musician got in touch with me about building a custom MIDI controller. This one works in conjunction with a Roland TM-2 Trigger Module. The way the TM-2 works is that it has two physical trigger buttons, but you can use two more by pressing a “shift” button so you get a total of four buttons. He said this worked fine for recording, but was not great for a live setup, so wanted a device with four physical buttons to press. He was looking for something about 2″ by 4″ in size.

I asked if he wanted all four buttons in a row, or two rows of two buttons, and we went with the latter. He also wanted buttons closer to 20mm rather than 30mm in diameter so that meant standard arcade style buttons would not work. I found some nice (metal) push buttons thar were solid so we went with those.

Here’s the 2D sketch I provided to the client. These sketches also help me determine the dimensions of the final unit. I basically create these sketches at actual size so I can determine spacing of all of the components. I also use the sketches to get approval from the client.

Like the Handheld 5 Button MIDI Controller we decided to go with a 3D printed enclosure rather than track down an existing metal or plastic enclosure that was the required dimensions.

The one difference from the 2D sketch is that the power LED got moved to the opposite corner just to allow more spacing between components. Speaking of spacing, I do wish I had made this enclosure just a wee bit larger, as stuffing all of the components and wires in was a bit tricky.

Somehow I managed to not take a photo of the power plugged in, but it goes into the smaller socket to the right of the MIDI jack. The LED turns on when power is plugged in.

This was another fun project and I learned a few things in the process. Hopefully the group using this (who makes music described as a “euphoric collision of post-punk, trance, and deconstructed opera”) finds this controller to be useful in their live shows.