Hi Jeppe, I found your videos just after starting to make my own electro-sax. I love the Open Horn, but I'm going for something simpler like the KLIKsophone. Just wondering - what's your reasoning for going for capacitive buttons instead of mechanical switches? I'd have thought the extra tactile feedback of a switch with a very light activation force would be a good thing.
Thanks George! Excellent question. When I started developing my various MIDI wind instrument I did consider buttons, but I didn't find any at the time that worked for me. When I figured out the digital switches with the darlington-array transistors for the original OHMs, I quickly got used to the static surface and even though I come from the saxophone, I never really missed having that tactile feedback. The most important thing, I find is to have a raised key that I can feel with my finger, rather than just an sensitive area on a flat surface. The switch from digital to capacitive was a no brainer once I discovered the Teensy boards. Only one cable for each sensor, with no extra transistors etc + No need to be grounded like with the darlington keys. Another consideration is that a mechanical switch will break at some point, while static keys don't suffer from wear and are essentially forever...
@@KontinuumLAB Thanks for the advice - it sounds like switching to a Teensy is worth a try for the easy capacitive sensing (my first prototype uses leftover keyboard switches and an Arduino Pro Micro). Did you ever have issues with latency?
@@GeorgeBryantLuxtylo no, the Teensy boards are much faster than the 16mhz of the pro micro. Default settings for the capacitive sensors are normally fast enough, but if you want to read many many sensors then you can tweak the settings to speed it up by editing the touch.c file (google that for details 😉)
@@KontinuumLAB It turns out my latency problems aren't in the Arduino - it's something to do with my Linux audio setup! Are you running a specific music distribution, or using any tweaks to reduce latency? I tried out Ubuntu Studio and it took my end-to-end latency from 160ms to 25ms.
@@GeorgeBryantLuxtyloThat's weird... I'm using stock Ubuntu 18, and I don't have MIDI latency problems. I'm using Jack, and added my user to the audio group, for real-time privileges, like mentioned here: jackaudio.org/faq/linux_rt_config.html , but if you're in Ubuntu studio then you should already have all that set up. Don't really have any other advice.... Except to keep hacking away at it, and you'll figure it out.
Once everything is calibrated, how do you get the instrument to play through the computer; like through Helm, for example? Is there a setting that needs to be activated in Helm for it to work?
Hi Josh. Did you finish your KLIKsophone? If so, that's awesome! I've only tried Helm in Ubuntu, but I guess this is universal. Plug in the instrument before opening Helm, and calibrate of course. Helm doesn't automatically do anything with the CC#2 MIDI signal, but once open, you can right click in the interface on the features that you want to affect, then select "Learn MIDI assignment" from the drop down that appears. Then activate the breath sensor, and you should be set. The basic one is "VOLUME" of course, but "FILTER" and "FORMANT" are also nice.
hello how can we use them in studio one program
Hi Jeppe, I found your videos just after starting to make my own electro-sax. I love the Open Horn, but I'm going for something simpler like the KLIKsophone. Just wondering - what's your reasoning for going for capacitive buttons instead of mechanical switches? I'd have thought the extra tactile feedback of a switch with a very light activation force would be a good thing.
Thanks George! Excellent question. When I started developing my various MIDI wind instrument I did consider buttons, but I didn't find any at the time that worked for me. When I figured out the digital switches with the darlington-array transistors for the original OHMs, I quickly got used to the static surface and even though I come from the saxophone, I never really missed having that tactile feedback. The most important thing, I find is to have a raised key that I can feel with my finger, rather than just an sensitive area on a flat surface. The switch from digital to capacitive was a no brainer once I discovered the Teensy boards. Only one cable for each sensor, with no extra transistors etc + No need to be grounded like with the darlington keys. Another consideration is that a mechanical switch will break at some point, while static keys don't suffer from wear and are essentially forever...
@@KontinuumLAB Thanks for the advice - it sounds like switching to a Teensy is worth a try for the easy capacitive sensing (my first prototype uses leftover keyboard switches and an Arduino Pro Micro). Did you ever have issues with latency?
@@GeorgeBryantLuxtylo no, the Teensy boards are much faster than the 16mhz of the pro micro. Default settings for the capacitive sensors are normally fast enough, but if you want to read many many sensors then you can tweak the settings to speed it up by editing the touch.c file (google that for details 😉)
@@KontinuumLAB It turns out my latency problems aren't in the Arduino - it's something to do with my Linux audio setup! Are you running a specific music distribution, or using any tweaks to reduce latency? I tried out Ubuntu Studio and it took my end-to-end latency from 160ms to 25ms.
@@GeorgeBryantLuxtyloThat's weird... I'm using stock Ubuntu 18, and I don't have MIDI latency problems. I'm using Jack, and added my user to the audio group, for real-time privileges, like mentioned here: jackaudio.org/faq/linux_rt_config.html , but if you're in Ubuntu studio then you should already have all that set up. Don't really have any other advice.... Except to keep hacking away at it, and you'll figure it out.
Once everything is calibrated, how do you get the instrument to play through the computer; like through Helm, for example? Is there a setting that needs to be activated in Helm for it to work?
Hi Josh.
Did you finish your KLIKsophone? If so, that's awesome!
I've only tried Helm in Ubuntu, but I guess this is universal. Plug in the instrument before opening Helm, and calibrate of course. Helm doesn't automatically do anything with the CC#2 MIDI signal, but once open, you can right click in the interface on the features that you want to affect, then select "Learn MIDI assignment" from the drop down that appears. Then activate the breath sensor, and you should be set. The basic one is "VOLUME" of course, but "FILTER" and "FORMANT" are also nice.
@@KontinuumLAB I did! And that definitely helps. I'm still trying to troubleshoot some things; hopefully I can get it figured out today.