Stribe1: Touchstrip + LED Bargraph Display

[toomelumsen]

how do you make that ?

[DigitalEngineeringCo]

That's cool!

[negroller]

Euphonix should replace the faders on their system5 consoles with touchstrips. Design-wise, that would be a damn slick improvement.

[omlan]

The product simply uses 2 Soft pot Touch potentiometers..... You can find them at sparkfun for about 15$ each

[CuriousInventor]

The complete schematics, code and everything is available at CuriousInventor com. The softpots are 170mm lengths, $16.89 each, not available at SF, but at our store.

[DiLamee]

omg awesome man

[EdgeyForSure]

omg i would kill for a stereo with touch controll buttons like that :O

[2113975]

You should mass produce this! Pair it with a set of speakers instead of a knob or wheel.

[theheadlessrabbit]

it looks like there is a slight delay between you hitting the controller, and the change occurring in the sound.

is the delay actually there, or is this a audio/video sync issue in this video?

[CuriousInventor]

I believe the delay occurred during the youtube encoding process (still trying to find the perfect input format for youtube). Check out 3:15 in the vimeo video on our site (link in desc.). The firmware shown in the video makes a round trip through the computer. ie, the touch is read by the computer and then the LEDs are updated. So any delay should be seen in the lights, also. When 8 Stribe1's are chained there is slightly more lag. A rough guess is 20ms or so.

[theheadlessrabbit]

ok, that is important to know. this makes the whole interface that much cooler.

20ms isn't enough of a delay for human ears to notice.

great work. I've never worked with a touchstrip before. i'll have to look into them.

[CuriousInventor]

we sell the touchstrips in our store, too. the brand name is softpots.

[theheadlessrabbit]

thats awesome. I googled 'touch strip potentiometer' and your store was they very first link. I see you have the ipod style rotary pot's, also.

oh, and nice touch including a ruler in the photo, along with the product.

but I'm curious about the description. is it an actual potentiometer, or a device that acts like one with the right micro-controller?

[CuriousInventor]

actual potentiometer. You put 5 volts across the outer pins and the middle one divides the voltage depending on touch location. We use a pull-down resistor (10k between the wiper and ground) to keep the output at 0V when it's not being touched. This way you can get trigger information.

[theheadlessrabbit]

oh, perfect!

i was curious, because i didn't see the resistance mentioned anywhere on the website when I clicked 'more info'.

thanks for the info, and the quick response.

[CuriousInventor]

the smaller ones have 10k total resistance. largest ones are around 20k.

[JohnLRice]

WOW! That is really great! I'm assuming this is MIDI out, right? Do you have a ribbon controller emulation mode in it so it could be used with a modular synth in the traditional way? (at least one that has a MIDI -> CV converter) Meaning that the level is only maintained as long as it's being touched andd drops down to zero when fingers are taken away.

[CuriousInventor]

It's a little bit beta right, actually. You need some sort of interface microcontroller board like an Arduino to act as a brain that can read the sensor and control the LEDs. You can get the Arduino code at our site / kits / stribe . However, once you have that, it's pretty easy to add MIDI or CV out features, (coming soon!). Right now you need Arduino + Max/MSP. You can add logic to hold the level even when fingers are taken away.

[MRSketch09]

I think what you have put together is pretty freaking neat.

Although I don't claim to understand it.. at all.

But I know it took effort and hard work, and for that you deserve a pat on the back.