DIY illuminated buton, Datawheel for the MIDIbox Community

[Dolphinicus]

Very true!  I'll bending them in such a way, that there's as little tension on the legs as possible.  One thing that I like about the tact switches, is the small amount of movement required, to activate the switch.  With the legs at approximately 90º, there should be as little movement as possible. :)

Of course, I'll be monitoring it through usage as well, and adjusting the angle as per possible requirements. :)  Sure it make take a few extra bends in the legs, to get the best combinations of angles, but it should work out. :)

[Mr modnaR]

personally, i'd wrap each leg 360 degrees around a round bar or pen (remove the pen after  ;)), that way all movement is spread along the length of the curve, which should translate to longer life. having any sharp bends focuses the movement to those small areas, which shortens the life of the leg considerably. even small movement is enough to cause metal fatigue. just look at the Comet (an aircraft which had a lot of crashes - not one aircraft, i mean one model of aircraft: obviously the same aircraft couldn't be crashed more than once!!  ;D) loads of these fell apart mid-air, due to the slight amount of extra flexion in the fuselage caused by the windows being slightly too large.

ok ok the faliure of an LED button isn't quite as catastrophic, but i hope you get the point!!  ;D  8)

[Dolphinicus]

Thank you!  Now THERE, is an excellent way to implement it!  :D  I don't have any busswire, but I'll strip 24g wire, wrap it around each leg and use that as the connection for each of the legs!  Thank you for that suggestion.  I don't want any of my LEDs crashing like a Comet brand plane. :P

Once I work out what appears to be the most workable connection, I'll photo the progress of assemblage, and put it up on my webpage as well in the 'Eventual Builder's Guide' section. :)

[TheAncientOne]

This company have some useful stuff.

http://www.devcon.com/products.cfm

I used their aluminium filled castable epoxy on a few occasions. The black 'flexane', (sadly they're in the Henry Ford colour scheme club), makes very good moulds. I made some large data wheels to replace some missing ones on an old lighting desk, years ago. I simply put the one good one into a former, and make a mould off it, I then cast two new ones out of the resin, cast around a machined core - I had the cores knurled by the machine shop to get a good grip. They lasted the desk out.

I saw some controls on a lighting desk last year, that were a sort of translucent 'caterpiller track' / belt, in the desk top, with an LED stack inside. For a cheaper version, perhaps a toothed belt, reversed, running over two small pulleys on a bracket made from alluminium angle. One pulley an idler, the other driving a non detented encoder, or possibly some kind of salvaged opto slotted/relective encoder. Put an LED stack alongside and we've bred ourselves some hybrid fader/datawheel.

I'll have a look at this if I can remember the supplier of cheap toothed belts.

Mike

[Mr modnaR]

tha't a great idea, thanks man.!

[Screaming_Rabbit]

I saw some controls on a lighting desk last year, that were a sort of translucent 'caterpiller track' / belt, in the desk top, with an LED stack inside.

... this was a PGM7000

http://www.pennyandgiles.com/docGallery/85.PDF

Greets, Roger

[stryd_one]

I'll have a look at this if I can remember the supplier of cheap toothed belts.

That'd be awesome man. I tried to find something like that after I saw the continuum controller, but didn't have any joy.

Good luck dude,  :)

[Mr modnaR]

they wouldn't actually need to be toothed i wouldn't have thought, as long as they didn't slip, they'd be fine.

[Mr modnaR]

this caterpillar track idea seems like a good way to implement motor faders, anyone know if this IS how they work, or could this be the start of what could be the first all terrain MIDIbox?  ;D

[TheAncientOne]

The caterpillar track bit was like this: I was going to use the belt 'inside out, with my finger moving the track bit, the end rollers were going to be just plain idlers to keep it in tension, and the encoder was going to be underneath on the outside, so to speak, being driven by the teeth. With a 2mm pitch belt, and 24 PPR encoders you'd get about 50 pulses in 100mm, so I did think of an optical encoder. You can print the segments onto acetate with an ink jet, if you want to do this with thicker plastic, use one of those printers with a CD adapter, it's not the best solution, but it does work. I pulled some very fine pitch stainless disc encoders out of some broken DLT drives, and there may be similar alsewhere.

What is needed is a design that can be easily made using minimal tooling, or could be bulk made very cheaply. The toothed belt seemed like a start to  a COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) solution. I still like the idea.

Mike

[TheAncientOne]

this caterpillar track idea seems like a good way to implement motor faders, anyone know if this IS how they work, or could this be the start of what could be the first all terrain MIDIbox?  ;D

The Penny and Giles ones use a wire loop, which wraps around a small 'drum' on the motor shaft. can be spring tensioned and thus somewhat self adjusting. I don't know how ALPS do it, their motors seem to be end mounted.

I did think of a motor fader based around an ordinary pot at one end, and a motor at the other joined by toothed belt. A bit like the famous 'Coffee Proof' ones I saw years ago. The trouble was, that without some very fancy machining work, they were over twice as wide as an ordinary fader. I used four as masters in an experimental (pre MIDI!) lighting desk. When they got worn, I replaced them with large edge wheels and and an LED display. We were only using 16 steps for the full range anyway.

Mike

[Mr modnaR]

i still prefer the caterpillar track idea, with maybe some visual feedback (leds up the side?) rather than being motorised. the motors add to the complexity (and hence: the number of things that can go wrong) and also add to the weight and make noise too! i kow m-audio did a MIDI controller with touchpads instead of faders, but this conveyor belt idea seems like it'lll work well, and be doable by most.

[TheAncientOne]

I think you're right. Motors have limited uses, I only like them for mixdowns, and the track would look neat too, as well as being a more intuitive too. I think optic sensing might be the way to go: longer lasting and quite compact, and those little slotted pickups are really cheap.

I'll have to get thinking seriously again.

Mike

[Mr modnaR]

something involving dissected mice? (computer mice, obviously!!)

[TheAncientOne]

something involving dissected mice? (computer mice, obviously!!)

Now you've done it! My mouse saw that and is now hiding under the monitor.

Seriously, that could be a good way to get the difficult bits. Make the faders in pairs then the mouse chips can be used. Same technique might work for wheels too.

The thought of a wheel unit with a rubber tyre, just running on part of the original mouse mech seems neat. The old, expensive, and now virtually useless serial port mice have just got themselves a new job..... I wonder if there is something in the Lego portfolio that might do for the wheel itself?

Nice idea!

Mike

[Mr modnaR]

yeah, this looks like a doable project!

[TheAncientOne]

Just spent a while digging in the junkbox for redundant mice.

Conclusions so far:

The older serial ones are more use - the more modern ones have too much of the mechanics integrated into the case, on the older ones it's board mounted. A couple of cheap modern wheel mice had a wheel assembly that could be removed from the PCB, by some judicious de-soldering. I then had a wheel with a single LED at one side, and a dual photo device at the other. I need a bit more time to dig into the device, but it's probably a pair of phototransistors, with maybe some threshold circuitry attached. Anyway, it should be easy enough to clean up the output, sort out some drivers and feed it into a DIN just like a switched encoder. The number of teeth parameter will need to be edited, thats all.

I wonder if I could use this on my MIDIbox monitor instead of the up and down buttons? I found a nice blue negative 4 line display, and a blue tinted transparent Hammond box to put it in, (very iMac, only a bit spoiled by my veroboard). A wheel would be a very intuitive way of scrolling through the display, and would go with the look of the box.

(Hmm since it's my first formal bit of MIDboxing, perhaps I should get the photographer over).

The other mouse internals had two pairs of phototransister & led at opposite sides of the wheel. I can cut the PCB to leave them both assembled, and the circuitry for the phototrnasistors looks simple enough to copy or cut off and splice back on. The return of Frankenmouse..... "It's alive I tell you! alive!", (just practising).

I found a meccano wheel with a rubber tyre which could run easily on the original spindles, and that would gear it up a lot. I think the search is on for something COTS, (Commercial Off The Shelf), for the wheel itself, unless we stick to filleting new cheap wheel mice, and stick to small devices

Well, I've made a start.

Mike

[Screaming_Rabbit]

... an other solution than ripping mices appart:

http://www.alliedelec.com/Images/Products/Datasheets/BM/HONEYWELL_OPTO_PRODUCTS/Honeywell-Opto-Products_Actives-and-Passives_2760060.pdf

another Fader technology which could be easy DIYed (mechanical wise):

http://www.djstatus.com/rane3.html

http://www.rane.com/ttm56video/colatest.wmv

Greets, Roger

[TheAncientOne]

Hi Roger

The problem isn't the opto system - there are plenty of those in old VCR's, tape drives, printers and the like, but the slotted wheel that acts as rotation detector. add to that the interesting little problem of aligning them in phase quadrature to detect direction, and an old mouse seems a bargain. In the UK, I get get new, but older types, at computer fairs for £2.30, if I go to the electronic scrapper I know locally he's glad for me to take some of this stuff away. Even some sites new ones are very cheap. e.g.

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=406749

The magnetic idea is good, I think some aircraft systems use it, as well as some professional joysticks. The thing I want is an up/down wheel, or pseudo slider, to get away from fixed end point pots.

I'll try and get some pix of some of the stuff I like.

More ideas the merrier though.

Mike

[Screaming_Rabbit]

... but the slotted wheel that acts as rotation detector.

http://users.adelphia.net/~skbosko/Robot_top.htm

Greets, Roger

[moxi]

hi,

that's my last baby: a blue cap with blue led: look greak (the white reflect on the top is an artefact of the photo...:

http://soundandbreakfast.ifrance.com/divers/blue_blue_led.jpg

as the blue leds I use are too long, i've been obliged to cut the top of them, a fastidious work, so if someone know where to find little (1 or 2mm) blue LEDs, let me know...

[stryd_one]

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access /divers/blue_blue_led.jpg on this server.

:(

[Jidis]

Yeah, I got that at first, when trying to jump right to it, but copying/pasting the URL worked for some reason. ???

-Cool button BTW

[stryd_one]

Nice lookin button mox! :)

That means that moxi's server is configured to only allow links to be accessed when the referrer is blank or the same domain. Webmasters do that so that people can't embed links to their sites from other sites :)

[moxi]

sorry, i don't understand why the link doesn't work.. :(

i will migrate to another host as soon as possible...this one (ifrance) it's a free one (good to know: with this host, free account are limited to 120mb, but my site already hold more than 400Mo and i don't have any problem  ;D...