[Digital_Hell] Touchpad controllers was Re: ribbon controllers

[The Dark force of dance]

Y-ellow Dubble 'n' y'all.

At 07:47 PM 01/14/99 EST, DubbleDub at aol.com wrote:
>Is there a way to use a generic windows touchpad to send MIDI
controller/sysex
>data ... ala the Korg Z1 ... more dynamic than a ribbon.
>
>An option could be to wire up the touchpad into PC1600, to use its software.
>Any PC1600 users here?
>
>Any interest in this type of interface?

I had thought of doing this. I have a little glide point gizmo here I use.
It's got advantages over a trackball but because it doesn't move under your
fingers, you tend to trace a kind of jerky movement some times. I like it
though.

There was, I saw somewhere, a little program someone wrote that translated
the mouse into MIDI. The shot would be then to get one of Philip Pilgrim's
([ [ [ [ [[The Lab] ] ] ] ] http://robotnik.com/the_lab/) UP kits. This can
turn an old PC into a 1600-like controller. Bung a midi card in it or an
old sound card and you've got yourself a controller with touch pad. I'm
sure if you put it to Philip, he could integrate the idea directly into his
UP.

What I had planned, but will be lucky to get round to doing, was a sort of
stand alone version of his UP. using a small atmel micro. This could send
and receive MIDI and read up to 256 pots. I have a pile of Joysticks now
which I had planed to use instead of sliders. Much nicer when you're doing
things like NRPNs.

I also have some documentation which shows how to read a mouse here
somewhere. It's easy but you'll need another micro on the end of it. With
my glide-point thingy at least, you couldn't just take some output from it
directly analogue.They don't work like that. They sense capacitance of your
finger on a plate. There are many ways to do it and I'm not sure exactly
how they do it in this case but it could be rather like a theramin in that
the frequency of a pair of oscillators could change depending on the x/y
coordinates. the on-board micro translates this into mouse movement.
Someone else here might have a better handle on how they actually do the
sensing but I know it's capacitively driven. You can't actually drive the
device with stick or something. You have to use your finger. Kind of like
an extension of the capacitive touch-switch.

I would seriously suggest that it would be worth talking to Philip about
his UP. It's very simple and you can use any ol' PC as the brains. I've got
a couple of ol' 286 Lap-tops here that I was thinking of using. Oh
actually, I think if I remember correctly, Philip's UP has a kind of fudged
MIDI port of it's own into the bargain. I know it's really simple and easy
to build.

Check it out.

Hope this helps.

Be absolutely Icebox.

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