[sdiy] DOTCOM Analog Sequencer.. next project startup..

[rsdio at audiobanshee.com]

On Jul 24, 2020, at 12:51 PM, Ingo Debus <igg.debus at gmail.com> wrote:
> Am 24.07.2020 um 15:52 schrieb Jean-Pierre Desrochers <jpdesroc at oricom.ca>:
>> I'm hesitating to use a row of switches with only one encoder Instead of
>> multiple encoders...
> 
> Yes, this doesn’t sound like an intuitive user interface. At least you’d need a display that shows you all the notes at once instead of showing only one note that is selected via button pressing.
> 
> I once had the idea that for an user interface like this, you could use *one* rotary encoder that is driven by many thumbwheel-style knobs, all one the same shaft. When one of the thumbwheels is touched, the corresponding parameter is selected. How about that? Of course you can only change one parameter at a time, so this is no good for mixing consoles or the like.  But for a sequencer this might work.

That's a neat idea, but unless someone has already manufactured the complicated mechanical structure that would allow 16 thumbwheel to turn the same encoder (without turning the other thumbwheels), then it sounds like a very expensive contraption to design and put together.

How do you envision keeping 15 thumbwheels stationary when 1 is turned if they're all connected to the same rotary encoder? Maybe I'm missing something obvious.

There are plenty of motorized fader systems that use capacitive sensing to determine when someone touches the fader so that the motor doesn't fight the change. I don't think anybody makes a thumbwheel that has cap-sense motor disengage (I don't even think they make motorized thumbwheels, for that matter). But you could replace the thumbwheels with tiny 1-dimensional touch sensors. Again, much more expensive.

Brian