Since the last update of Nerdseq, Thomas has allowed us to open new horizons of assignable control via the sega gameport of the MIDI extension.
When I play live, my hands are already busy while my feet are useless. I then got the idea of diverting a fake Sega Megadrive controller at $5 into a foot switch controller.
Ok, ready to open the (empty) beast!
I locate the names of the buttons and I put a little tin on the small contact pads to solder the wires.
The goal is to make contact between the ground and the pad to trigger the button.
I didn’t have a box, so I took an old router
I took it apart, transferred the electronic card and presto! a beautiful box!
With a little hot glue I glued the circuit of the controller
I then soldered wires to the pads and the ground
Ok, for this part we’re good. I will now take care of the top part and the switches. These are normally open but momentarily closed pedal switches. There is no click, when you release the switch goes back to the normally open position. Just like the gamepad buttons.
Here is the batch of 10 switches bought on bangood.
We will look at the length but they look pretty good. Very heavy!
I didn’t think very well about the layout of the switches, I should have done it better I think. I just made sure they were spaced far enough apart to activate them at the foot without pressing two at the same time.
Here I screwed the switches
There I used stripped single stranded wire to connect everything to the ground. it’s almost pretty…
I labeled the switches as I thought it would be the most practical VS intuitive
All you have to do is solder all the cables coming from the controller to the corresponding switches. Since I only had 10 switches, one is missing to connect all the pads, so I left the start button aside.
And here is a “MEGANE PEDAL 3000” functional, assignable and very practical for the live for a few Francs / Euros / Dollars. Enjoy!
Easy to assign, easy to use…