[sdiy] Alternatives to Faders

[Chris K]

Hey Edward,

Rotarty encoders would work, pretty commonplace on DAWs these days.

I've used the Bournes Mouser # 652-PEC11-4225F-S24 , its rated at 30k 
rotational cycles, and goes for around $1.00ea qty > 10.

peace,
ck

Edward King wrote:

> Ive been playing around with my panel design for a little while 
> (taking a break from soldering, woodwork, metalwork and the fiddly 
> business of slotted switches).
>
> One of the things that has always bugged me about any board that Ive 
> bought is the limit of channel / track controls.
> Since most synths are limited to 16 MIDI channels, this is usually 
> what you get. Plus a master volume control.
>
> Further, most workstations provide track / channel control through 
> up/down buttons or in the case of newer DAWS, faders on a touchscreen.
> Neither of these options are very friendly and certainly dont provide 
> a level of fluidity required for smooth control of tracks.
>
> The alternatives are of course faders, but herein lies the problem:
> What if you have more tracks / channels than you can cater for with 
> faders? They do - after all - take up a reasonable amount of space and 
> the decent ones (of which I think Penny and Giles are probably the 
> creme de la creme) cost a bomb. Quality does matter. A basic 100mm 
> 0.50 pence fader will last only a few thousand operations before 
> degredation is really noticeable. A 50 dollar fader will last a lot 
> longer (probably the lifetime of the machine) but would you really 
> spend 800 dollars for faders on a homebuilt?
>
> The problem remains though that if you have more tracks than faders, 
> you have to abstract this out and use a bank switching arrangement. 
> This introduces problems of its own...if you have fader #1 moved to 
> 70% and then switch banks so that fader #1 is now covering track #17, 
> the fader will still be at its 70% position and this will cause a jump 
> from whatever value track 17 was at before to the 70% mark its 
> controller now is.
>
> The only practical way around this I can tell is to use motorised 
> faders that - when you switch fader banks - move the faders to reflect 
> the values of the tracks they now represent.
> These are even more expensive and take up even more board real estate 
> though, not to mention the increase in power and control and 
> interfacing requirements.
>
> So, Im open to ideas (especially ones which enable me to use 16 faders 
> to represent multiples of 16 tracks).
>
> I have a few of my own and this is the current favourite:
>
> I was playing around with a ball mouse, cleaning out the gunk from the 
> rollers when it suddenly occurred to me that the sensing mechanism was 
> quite hardy, but very compact. I dont know if its common knowledge, 
> but the sensitivity of mice can be adjusted from the mouse as well as 
> the operating system.
>
> So I set up an experiment to see whether I could get the right 
> sensitivity - versus - input ratio and it more than suffices.
>
> I figured that since pitch-bend or modulation wheels are commonplace 
> on synths, they are immediately identifiable as control surfaces and 
> have a proven track record.
> They are also the right size (ish) and becuase nearly 50% of their 
> area would sit above the surface of the panel, they are reasonably 
> compact.
>
> Of all the ball mice sensing components, some use an analogue led and 
> phototransistor setup (which is then converted by the electronics), 
> but most use a logic output. Both types have drive electronics 
> (usually in the form of a single chip).
> A quick search of components suppliers puts these sensors at a cost 
> which provides a cheaper and more flexible solution than all of the 
> above. Funnily enough though, it works out cheaper to buy 50 ball mice 
> (which obviously contain 2 sets of sensors and electronics) than it is 
> to buy the sensors themselves.
>
> Has anyone tried this method?
>
>
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