Custom buttons

Finally Pictures of my custom buttons

These have been in and working for about 5 months but I haven't got around to getting any proper pic’s of them.

The buttons are arranged in 3 separate sections.
Section 1 Recall all the standard views I,E,D,A,X,O,L,F
Section 2 Recalls F Keys, FOH, 8 x monitors and some views, 1-16 17-32, Groups, Returns and masters.
Section 3 Shift, Alt, Ctrl and a Save Session macro.

All the control is done by Arduino including USB output to talk to the computer.

It took 6 month to build and I can honestly say I have never written a line of code in my life before this project.

Thanks to My friend Marcel for considerable help with the code.

Gota say I'm really please I spent the time on this, I know some will say whats wrong with a keyboard but we all have different opinions.


Steve C

Steve, I'll have to admit a fair bit of jealousy. That's a rockin set up.

It's a rockin' panel for sure... but I did similar by just buying an X-Keys programmable keyboard!

http://www.x-keys.com/xkeys.php

Great quality, easily programmable, very reliable (mine now about 11 years old, and has been reprogrammed over and over for various duties - now probably about to go into SAC duties after seeing your setup. Probably not as much fun as building and programming up as your own Arduino project though.

You can even buy a 'stick' version that fits into a rack-mountable adaptor...

http://www.x-keys.com/xkeys/xkstick.php

I have no connection with X-keys, other than as a happy camper.


Sonovox.

Yes The X-Keys look good, I found them about half way through building my system.

I nearly stopped the project, but i'm glad I didden't.

My buttons are smaller and have tri colour LED's inbuilt.
There is room for a lot more code upgrades yet as things develop.

Also I have several different latch arrangements so you know what button you pressed but it allows for some usable history of buttons e.g.
If you press The (Fader key) i.e. (F) it stay lit
and dosen't turn off the (FOH) or (1 - 16) buttons.
The others like the save and shift buttons are momentery.

S

http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/optimus/aux/

That's cool too Makar, but at $500+ that's more than I'd want to put into it.

I am looking at possible alternative's for a control surfaces to use with and as monitor control on stage. What are your thoughts on being able to set these up for this?
My thoughts are using a simple flat screen on stage with one of these strips or keypads as the pre programed controls. The computers would be off stage or somewhere else.
Just thinking out loud.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sonovox

It's a rockin' panel for sure... but I did similar by just buying an X-Keys programmable keyboard!

http://www.x-keys.com/xkeys.php

Great quality, easily programmable, very reliable (mine now about 11 years old, and has been reprogrammed over and over for various duties - now probably about to go into SAC duties after seeing your setup. Probably not as much fun as building and programming up as your own Arduino project though.

You can even buy a 'stick' version that fits into a rack-mountable adaptor...

http://www.x-keys.com/xkeys/xkstick.php

I have no connection with X-keys, other than as a happy camper.


Sonovox.

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Or buy the XKeys developers kit http://www.piengineering.com/custom/xkmatrix.php (containing all the electronics) and rol your own keyboard in whatever shape or layout is most convenient the advantage is that you are able to increase the number of keys considerably.

Cheers Robert V.

That's a slick setup, Steve; all the way around. I certainly don't intend to detract from that, but for discussion's sake, a poor man's version of this would be to just wire up whatever switches you want to use directly to the circuit of a donor keyboard. It's obviously not the same, but might work for some people.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by matthew_

That's a slick setup, Steve; all the way around. I certainly don't intend to detract from that, but for discussion's sake, a poor man's version of this would be to just wire up whatever switches you want to use directly to the circuit of a donor keyboard. It's obviously not the same, but might work for some people.

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Yes I thought of that, and there are dedicated encoders which do that if you don't want to butcher a keyboard.
A lot of keyboards are connected by very thin ribbon cable which is really hard to solder on to.

Nicely done Steve.

Don't let them get you down, you are on the right path:)

KUI