#527

His pictures has the opz hooked up with usb and no audio cable and doesn’t mention what cable but I’m also unfamiliar with the other trs ins and outs. But hey :crazy_face:

#528

Wondering if it would be possible to map the knobs on an OPz to control parameters on Norns kind of like an alternative to Arc? Has anyone tried this?

1 Like
#529

Those knobs should send midi and would thus be mappable to norns params.

To get that act as an arc (using arc functions etc) would require some kind of translation library similar to what people have done with midigrid

#530

Paging @dan_derks. Cheat Codes has some neat “opZ as arc” functionality.

2 Likes
#531

Yeah I was thinking it would work for CheatCodes :grin:

#532

Look no further(unless this has been removed in newer beta versions, I am a bit out of the loop these days):

1 Like
#533

Has anyone tried a Mutable CV Pal with the Norns?

1 Like
#534

Any suggestion for a cheap/dirty/simple way to plug my guitar straight into Norns? Would I need a preamp that output stereo to do this?

I was thinking about something like a Zoom MS70CDR for putting some FX in the chain (and also it’s stereo) but as I understand it does not output line level?

Edit: From its manual it looms like the MS70CDR can output line level, so it would be perfect. Any experience with it?

#535

Love it, its funky, its full of effects. I’ve run guitar>ms70cdr>Norns and it works just fine. You can introduce some stereo spread depending on which effects you use, there is a little 5 band eq, multi tap delays.

2 Likes
#536

MS70CDR is fantastic. Extreme range of high-quality effects. Unfortunately it has some noise/ground loop issues when powered over USB.

1 Like
#537

Thanks guys, it looks great.

I plan to power it with a wall wart at home and with an USB - DC step-up converter on the go so that could be a non issue for me!

#538

I’d probably lean towards one of the “guitar multi fx” as well so that you’ll get something that resembles more an amplified / recorded guitar rather than the dry guitar signal if you want to. I suppose pretty much all of the normal digital ones (whether Zoom, Line 6 or something else) output some kind of line level signal - not necessarily a very hot one, but still one that’s usable with Norns.

FWIW you don’t really need a stereo output, you can as well plug a mono signal in. Stereo fx are fun, of course…

#539

Ah yes, the zoom power over usb noise problem. I usually power all my zoom gear with rechargeable batteries so I had forgotten about it.

#540

New friend (work in progress)

image
image4032×3024 1.53 MB

(Mech-key midi keyboard + knobs + small oled. Could also be a x0x-ish sequencer)

53 Likes
#541

That’s very cool!

And actually made me think: what if one added an extra switch to a DIY mech keyboard (say, 40-60% size to be compact, maybe ortholinear instead of staggered layout) to make it start up either as a class compliant USB MIDI device or HID / keyboard depending on need. That way you’d have a keyboard that works both for playing MIDI notes and typing / programming something like Orca or Yggdrasil.

For someone who’s used actual piano keyboards it’s maybe not super tempting, but for people used to “keyjazz” on trackers or playing with isomorphic layouts (Linnstrument, Grid, etc.), that might actually be a pretty fun idea to carry one device that acts as both.

3 Likes
#542

super cool!
@okyeron did you design your own pcb for it?

@kbra love this idea. as someone who learned music by “keyjazzing”, having a hardware switch to change mode on a keyboard would be really neat : )

1 Like
#543

It would be fun to dust DipTrace and draw a PCB for something like this. I suppose (un)fortunately the easy way to do this would be just to take an existing freely available ortho PCB design and extend its firmware as the hardware would be pretty much identical anyway.

I’m clueless about USB enumeration though, not sure if it’s eg. possible for a single hardware device to appear as both a HID device and USB MIDI device at once. So instead of eg. replugging and choosing a mode at startup, one could just have a switch / key combination to determine which “virtual” device will send the keypress data, and sort of alternate between keyboard and MIDI input on the fly.

What would make it fancier hardware-wise would be to use ON-ON switches and make it velocity sensitive. I’m not sure if there are any Cherry / Kailh / Gateron / what-have-you type decent mech keyboard switches that are anything but ON-OFF though. There are experimental / expensive keyboards using IR sensing for determining velocity, but it sounds a bit too complex and expensive for a full keyboard.

1 Like
#544

You could totally make a keyboard firmware that showed up as both a MIDI device and a HID keyboard and then do as you say. I think the QMK firmware might already allow this, at least a quick search reveals this:

https://beta.docs.qmk.fm/developing-qmk/qmk-internals-in-progress/internals_midi_device

QMK is a great customizable firmware for (QWERTY) keyboards, it runs on many common microcontrollers and has a number of extra features, like support for displays.

1 Like
#545

Woah. So nice. Sign me up!

2 Likes
#546

Should have guessed one of the universal firmwares already has things at least half ready … Thanks!

I actually have a mech keyboard under construction I was thinking of using QMK with, so shall investigate once the hardware is wired up :slight_smile: