USB button "farms"

Re: USB button "farms"

Tony "T" Tissot said:
Any new suggestions for a (under $100) USB button panel?

Idiot proofing a Light Factory panel for ease of operation. 20-30 keys should be sufficient.

Low cost is good. Do not want to go MIDI.
Click to expand...

I didn't want to go MIDI either, but I got a free M-Audio Trigger Finger. Yay, 16 big touch-sensitive bump buttons. I can get these to work fine, but I can't get the faders or knobs to map to ANYTHING useful in Elation's COMPU lighting program.

Any ideas? I'm waiting for a really sweet keyboard option from someone in this thread.
 
Re: USB button "farms"

If you can make your budget a hair larger, you could get either an X-Keys Desktop or X-Keys XK-24 for $130. I use an X-Keys Professional with MagicQ and the ETC Eos offline programmer and I have been very happy with them. Fantastic quality and they can easily be rearranged and relegended down to road making them a relatively decent investment.
 
Re: USB button "farms"

Got a Korg Nano Pad for $40 new. USB powered and hookup, no wall wart. 12 buttons
It has 4 banks so you can do 48 triggers. I put "all on" and "blackout" on the same buttons in all 4 scenes, so I get 42 different scenes
The Korg Kontrol software is a breeze to use. Got it triggering scenes and programmed within an hour of cracking the package
Hopefully it won't break at the first show!
 
Re: USB button "farms"

Tony "T" Tissot said:
Any new suggestions for a (under $100) USB button panel?

Idiot proofing a Light Factory panel for ease of operation. 20-30 keys should be sufficient.

Low cost is good. Do not want to go MIDI.
Click to expand...

Logitech G-13 "Gaming" Keyboard ?
22 keys x 3 modes, 4-way joystick with a couple more buttons
With attached software, emulates any keystroke (or sequence of keystrokes)
I think I paid less than a c-note a couple of years ago.
Chris.
 
Re: USB button "farms"

Well, the Novation Launch Pad looked great.
Lots of buttons.
Powered by the USB cable
Light weight.
What could be wrong?

Well......................
It has a top row of buttons that is not assignable.
One of them is a "learn" button and if you accidentally press it, the thing remaps itself.
Also, if you assign a button to (example) MIDI note 13, and later reassign it to (example) MIDI note 42, it will now trigger both notes.
Of the 8 support e-mails I've sent, 2 replies asked me the same thing which I had tried. The rest remain unanswered.

I'll keep messing with it, but it looks like I need a better button farm

Any ideas?

What I want:
- A bunch of buttons (64 would be a good enough. I can assign 99 buttons max in my software)
- Prefer it to be USB
- Must work with a PC since my lighting software is on a PC
- ALL buttons must be mappable to MIDI note or program change
(There will be no key that will: shuts the program off, remaps the keyboard, turn the display off, etc...)
- Basically, I need something that after I set it up, that I can hand it to someone and say "push buttons - the ones you like, push those more often"

The Launchpad was $130. If I have to pay $500 to get something that works like it should, I'll consider it.

--------------------------------------------

Edit - found the secret handshake (4 specific keys all pressed at once) that will disable the "learn button"
May have fixed the other problem as well. It seems my problems stem mostly from lack of good user documentation, rather than being an issue with the hardware.
 
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