Hey gang -
TL:DR up front: What are some good, currently supported + available alternatives to the 'nOb’ controller, Griffin Powermate or Novation Nocturn ‘speed dial’?
As best I can tell most of these are outdated/no longer supported, and the Nocturn is a bit more than I need. (fingers crossed I’m wrong on this though!)
Longer form: as I’m getting into my thirties and rounding a decade of squinting at Ableton + Max patches for hours on end, I’m getting to the point where I’m starting to think about ergonomics, and the way I physically interact with my virtual composition environment.
In performance and the studio, i use a whole range of MIDI controllers, but the thing I’m realizing is that often when I (and I assume many of us) compose, it’s less of a ‘static system’ with 1 to 1 mappings of controller to function, but more of a rapid prototyping of plugging things in, tweaking, changing, etc (often with Max, Reaktor/Blocks, etc etc).
Because of this, it occurs to me that MIDI controllers don’t help too much because of the constant time spent mapping/unmapping, but perhaps something like a giant, easily assignable wheel that could tweak when I hover the mouse over parameters could both make the whole process a bit more fun/fast, and take a bit of eye/wrist/finger strain off the whole thing too.
As best I can tell, the nOb does exactly what I’m thinking of, but not sure how active the folks making it are these days. Griffen Powermate + Palette etc seem in the same ball park, but im seeing hit or miss things about their cross platform performance (and use with VST plugins, etc).
Is there an obvious answer I’m missing, or even some sort of fun Arduino project I could throw together? Would be super curious + grateful to hear everyone’s take.
thx a bundle! 
–edit: somehow I completely missed this thread while searching earlier - many thx moderators who placed here/hello from 2020, thread!
