[LAU] another control surface question

[Len Ovens]

On Thu, 3 Jul 2014, Fons Adriaensen wrote:

> It all seems a nice idea, but OTOH you can get a Yamaha motorised
> fader for 20 Euro, see
> <http://www.thomann.de/it/yamaha_ls_901vmotorised_fader.htm>.
>
> I wonder if you can get and assemble all the required parts for
> a usable 'belt fader' for that price.

That is about the same price I was looking at for motor faders to. But... 
that is not the whole story... You need also the driver for the motor, a 
touch sensor so it knows you are controling it and don't burn the motor 
out trying to go against your movement and you also need an analog in 
port. Also needed is the circuitry to receive the virtual fader position 
from where ever and apply it to the fader logic. SO the fader is $20, but 
the whole price is closer to $50 (for diy, manufactures can design for way 
cheaper with custom chips, etc. as they are already making a board of some 
sort.) An encoder is pretty much direct digital read and only one 
direction data flow. So the cost of belt and pullies may be still less 
than the motor fader in a diy situation. In a manufactured product, motor 
faders give the user what is "expected" which is a way lower risk than the 
cost of re-engineering and a possible product flop. I am sure using a 
large touchscreen could be done for a reasonable price if the expensive 
projects had worked out well, but that doesn't seem to have happened. 
People want faders they can feel... we want to be able to feel them and 
operate them without looking either because we are watching something 
else, or even because it is dark. In fact too many screens may make the 
room to light for some people or in a live situation.

I haven't even started ordering parts, let alone building, and I have 
already learned a lot.  :)  I am almost thinking about doing more than one 
kind of fader just to see what the differnce in complexity, cost and usage 
is. I will have to think of a reasonable way of using more than one kind 
with out it being confusing.

Because of my usage, where the computer is the other part of the mix desk, 
There are differences from what a stand alone control surface would be 
like. I am relying on the computer screen(s) for things like fader 
position and may have a small, skinny, monitor strip for the bottom of the 
screen to give other feedback. I am not even sure that my USB interface 
will be fast enough to make any kind of fader work, it will give me a pile 
of buttons though, I will at least have a way of controlling transport and 
some other things that is not focus dependant (does not require the 
application I am controlling to be the window with focus).


--
Len Ovens
www.ovenwerks.net