I’ve coveted a modular synthesizer since, well, my grade-school buddy’s dad brought home an ARP 2600 for a week or so. For a while lately I’ve thought maybe I could just get a big-ass touch screen and run a virtual modular, savings many bucks, but this post hits the nail on the head. Physical knobs, sliders and switches are just so much more usable and intuitive.
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Got any write up on how you made this? I’m very impressed, and it looks quite helpful!
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I would LOVE one of those, especially for my office (if/when I ever go back to the office).
The conference rooms in my office for years had table-top Polycom speakerphones for conference calls. Both the base units and the mic extensions (for bigger conference rooms) had big physical mute buttons and big red LEDs that would flash when muted. During negotaions, this made it super easy for us to caucus with the folks in the room, confident that the other side couldn’t hear us.
But a couple years ago, we renovated and they installed fancy built-in video/audio conference systems in most of the conference rooms, operated by wireless touchscreens (of course). The touchscreens aren’t hard to use, and the rooms look much less cluttered. But there’s now just one tiny mute button in the corner of the touchscreen and only the person holding the touchscreen can tell if we’re muted or not (and only by squinting at it). Every conference call now involves constantly whispering “are we muted?” to whoever the schmuck is who ends up holding the touchscreen.
We’ve begged the office manager to put a Polycom in there, but he doesn’t like the way the wires look. Sigh.
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That’s brilliant! What handles the computer interface? Might need to steal that idea and create one of my own.
I agree its brilliant. One way to do the interface which comes to mind is to re-purpose a keyboard. Solder wires to the back of the existing switches and attach them to the external switches.
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I’d personally be more inclined to use a microcontroller in HID mode - you can just program each input to output the right keystrokes without needing to mess with wiring up a keyboard. I have a large number of PIC chips from a past project I could use, but I’ve not been doing much in the microcontroller/SBC space for a few years so I was curious what people are doing now.
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It’s built on an Arduino Leonardo board in HID mode with a sketch that controls the keyboard output and the color of the programmable LEDs.
You can make it do pretty much anything. The faceplate is actually removable so you can have different plates depending on what you need it to do.
The whole thing was probably $30 bucks worth of parts plus the filament for the box.
I’ll see if I can put the 3d-models and arduino sketch on Thingiverse this weekend
It’s not the cleanest build but perfectly functional and quick
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You could sell this
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“don’t text and drive,” they say, “don’t text and drive…” “don’t text and drive goddammit!”
meanwhile, my car’s head unit containing all of the operations i used to be able to do just by feeling around: “looook into my eyyyyyes!”
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Awesome! Thanks. I’ll need to get my workbench cleared off, I’ve found my next project. 
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This. A MILLION FUCKING TIMES, THIS!!
I’ve just bought what I hope will be my last Volvo. A 2014 model. Should see me out. Anything later starts to have touchscreens instead of knobs, buttons, switches and dials. All of which demand more of my attention being diverted from the road in order to operate.
In my current car, I have strong muscle memory for most operations and the quickest of glances is all I need - the rest is feel. In a newer one I would not have, and would never develop any muscle memory. Poking the same bit of screen several times to operate various things would require looking to confirm the screen was showing me the symbol/icon I needed to poke. Utter madness.
Volvo. Of all people, Volvo. The ones who have built an entire brand on safety. The ones who have stated nobody will henceforth be killed in one of their cars.
Seriously - I have had 8 or 9 Volvos over the years - been pretty loyal. But now they can go fuck themselves. They’ve completely lost the plot, simply because today’s driver follows fashion more than functionality and Volvo won’t risk being right if being right loses sales - better to follow fashion, keep sales up, and damn the consequences.
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They might as well just admit that the JSF programme is designed to shovel money to aerospace contractors, and drop the requirement for them to deliver any new hardware at all, if its going to be as badly-designed as this.
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This is peacetime weapon development. Once they get these into some serious shooting scrapes, there will be some major revisions. Or they’ll scrap the F35 completely and build more F16s and F15s and F22s.
During the 80s/90s the military spent a lot of money on Humvees and the Stryker program. After a year or two in Iraq, they moved to MRAP program. All the ways they imagined things going, and all the things they spent money on, were replaced by big trucks with v-shaped hulls called MRAPs that cost 1/5 of a Stryker.
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The Navy went with touch screens in the CnC of its latest combat vessels. After a liitle experience, the Navy has reversed course and will fall back on hard switch and defined purpose visual indicators/interfaces.
The error rates incurred by multi-purpose, touch-screen technology effectively killed the drive to use the technology.
The USAF would be wise to follow suit.
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I rode in a Tesla 3 the other day for the first time. There are almost no indicators or controls to speak of outside of the massive touchscreen and a couple of buttons on the steering wheel. Not even a speedometer behind the steering wheel. And when I first got in, the touchscreen glitched and the driver had to REBOOT THE CAR. TWICE. Apparently you can still drive it even if the touchscreen isn’t working, but you’ll have no idea what’s going on (not even how fast you’re going). Yikes.
The owner swore it was the first time it had glitched after a few months of ownership. But I can’t imagine owning a car that is so dependent on a computer, and that doesn’t even have a volume knob for the stereo. And where the manufacturer can push an update the completely changes the interface of the touchscreen.
OTOH, the self-driving capabilities are quite impressive. He let me drive, and I turned on the Autopilot while we were on two-lane highways at night in the rain, and the car handled it incredibly well. It was still terrifying and my hands were never more than a millimeter or two away from the wheel (especially when cars approached in the opposite direction), but it really works.
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Which is why, no matter how wonderful a Tesla may become, even if they gave them away for free, I would never have one.
ETA
I would be very surprised that this complies with UK construction and use regs. But I guess it must.
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Oh, this is lovely. I’m going to share this with my colleagues (I work for an audio-video integrator) and may need to order some of these from you after that 
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what it’s really good at is what it’s really for
it’s very good at making money disappear
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Yeah, and try doing that when you’re pulling 6 Gs.
Seriously, is touch screens the worst idea or the worstest for a fighter jet?
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I have a feeling what we’ll see is full-touchscreens in these kind of situations evolve toward digital screens with limited touchscreen capabilities, and then physical keys/buttons/knobs with small screens built-into them that can be contextually reconfigured on the fly.
There is actually some patent evidence that this is what Apple may evolve the “full touchscreen” Touch Bar into over the next few years. Who knows, maybe it will even be featured in the major Arm-based laptop redesign that is expected later this year.
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