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Palette Gear: Hands-On Control of Your Favourite Software

38 points by prawn 11y ago

scrumper 11y ago
I like it. Something I see in music tech in particular is a growing number of hardware controllers interacting with specialized software; the marriage is really powerful and makes for a very pleasant and productive experience. Native Instruments Maschine (sic) is a great example. More 3D printing will only increase that, and I think we'll start to see ever more task-specific hardware devices augmenting (and replacing in some cases) traditional keyboards and mice. The tangible nature of a real physical controller just can't be approached by multitouch devices. EDIT: thought some more about this. I'd be worried about weight and slipping: what anchors it to the desk? It'll be frustrating and fatiguing to use if you have to keep pulling it back in place every time you grab a knob.
vvanders 11y ago
Nifty, I feel like it's really missing a simple 8-segment label so you can easily remember what you've mapped various actions to.
red_admiral 11y ago
The idea is great. The cheapest option available is $199 for a slider, two buttons and a dial ... I'm wondering how much it would cost to build something similar out of an arduino and a few electrical components, then connect it up as a USB HID or something. 3D-printed casing too of course. Less than $100?
- icefox 11y ago
  Would you spend more than $199 of your time?
- daveguy 11y ago
  It's the slick design and component based magnetic click-together configuration that you're paying for. Like icefox points out. That kind of design and polish would take a lot more than $199 worth of your time. Although it would be pretty fun as a hobby DIY project (even cooler with sensor blocks for testing robotics/iot/etc).
eximius 11y ago
I kind of want to make this work in Star Citizen...
FreedomToCreate 11y ago
The price is high but I had a chance to play around with a set and the quality is impeccable. The dials and buttons have a great tactile feel and everything works fast. Blows away having to go through adobe control panel. I really want one, especially once film editing is better integrated, but for now the cost slightly above my needs. Would recommend to any professionals.
prawn 11y ago
I'd be interested in trying this with Photoshop. Wonder if they would've been better off if each module was a group of 3-4 blocks?
brandonmenc 11y ago
Kind of expensive when you can get something like a Behringer BCR2000 with 24 rotary encoders for $150. The real killer product would be software that intelligently maps MIDI to Photoshop. Does that exist?
- zokier 11y ago
  Fun thing, apparently GIMP (on Linux at least) supports MIDI as input device: https://www.gimp.org/unix/howtos/gimp-midi.html https://www.gimp.org/unix/howtos/gimp-midi.html Of course I don't expect that to be very polished feature, but I'm kinda tempted to buy some cheap controller just to try it out.
fumar 11y ago
I like this solution, but does "feel" costly with a starting price of $199. I would love to see a MIDI (hardware) expert create a similar offering that could be used with music software and the adobe suite.
lcrs 11y ago
I'm interested to know how they're interfacing with the Adobe apps. I hooked up trackballs to Levels in Photoshop using the official "Connection SDK" a couple of years ago and the latency felt terrible, as far as I could tell due to Photoshop's response time. Hopefully something has improved there in the interim... http://lewisinthelandofmachines.tumblr.com/post/60137039416/poverty-stricken-grading-part-2-mans-dont-even http://lewisinthelandofmachines.tumblr.com/post/60137039416/... Seems a shame there isn't a standard for mapping hardware to generic UI controls, the way MIDI is ubiquitous in audio production. All video apps support control surfaces of some kind but Avid/Tangent/Filmlight/Davinci/Lightworks panels all use their own closed protocols and I'm not aware of any of them having been reverse-engineered :(
jestar_jokin 11y ago
With a bit of work, you can get similar functionality using off-the-shelf MIDI controllers and AutoHotKey. Here's my efforts: - Map sliders and buttons on a Novation Nocturn to media keys (volume, play, stop, mute etc). - Map a foot pedal (Behringer FCB1010) to a virtual joystick, for use in Euro Truck Simulator 2. AHK is super powerful for Windows automation, so I'm sure you create more sophisticated mappings that tweak the "Saturation" value when a certain window or dialog is open. I think given the range of MIDI controllers available, this would give you more options for physical inputs. Can you imagine using a "Yamaha WX5 MIDI Wind Controller" to control Photoshop?

38 points by prawn 11y ago

I like it. Something I see in music tech in particular is a growing number of hardware controllers interacting with specialized software; the marriage is really powerful and makes for a very pleasant and productive experience. Native Instruments Maschine (sic) is a great example. More 3D printing will only increase that, and I think we'll start to see ever more task-specific hardware devices augmenting (and replacing in some cases) traditional keyboards and mice. The tangible nature of a real physical controller just can't be approached by multitouch devices. EDIT: thought some more about this. I'd be worried about weight and slipping: what anchors it to the desk? It'll be frustrating and fatiguing to use if you have to keep pulling it back in place every time you grab a knob.

vvanders 11y ago

Nifty, I feel like it's really missing a simple 8-segment label so you can easily remember what you've mapped various actions to.

red_admiral 11y ago

The idea is great. The cheapest option available is $199 for a slider, two buttons and a dial ... I'm wondering how much it would cost to build something similar out of an arduino and a few electrical components, then connect it up as a USB HID or something. 3D-printed casing too of course. Less than $100?

icefox 11y ago
Would you spend more than $199 of your time?
daveguy 11y ago
It's the slick design and component based magnetic click-together configuration that you're paying for. Like icefox points out. That kind of design and polish would take a lot more than $199 worth of your time. Although it would be pretty fun as a hobby DIY project (even cooler with sensor blocks for testing robotics/iot/etc).

eximius 11y ago

I kind of want to make this work in Star Citizen...

FreedomToCreate 11y ago

The price is high but I had a chance to play around with a set and the quality is impeccable. The dials and buttons have a great tactile feel and everything works fast. Blows away having to go through adobe control panel. I really want one, especially once film editing is better integrated, but for now the cost slightly above my needs. Would recommend to any professionals.

prawn 11y ago

I'd be interested in trying this with Photoshop. Wonder if they would've been better off if each module was a group of 3-4 blocks?

brandonmenc 11y ago

Kind of expensive when you can get something like a Behringer BCR2000 with 24 rotary encoders for $150. The real killer product would be software that intelligently maps MIDI to Photoshop. Does that exist?

zokier 11y ago
Fun thing, apparently GIMP (on Linux at least) supports MIDI as input device: https://www.gimp.org/unix/howtos/gimp-midi.html https://www.gimp.org/unix/howtos/gimp-midi.html Of course I don't expect that to be very polished feature, but I'm kinda tempted to buy some cheap controller just to try it out.

fumar 11y ago

I like this solution, but does "feel" costly with a starting price of $199. I would love to see a MIDI (hardware) expert create a similar offering that could be used with music software and the adobe suite.

lcrs 11y ago

I'm interested to know how they're interfacing with the Adobe apps. I hooked up trackballs to Levels in Photoshop using the official "Connection SDK" a couple of years ago and the latency felt terrible, as far as I could tell due to Photoshop's response time. Hopefully something has improved there in the interim... http://lewisinthelandofmachines.tumblr.com/post/60137039416/poverty-stricken-grading-part-2-mans-dont-even http://lewisinthelandofmachines.tumblr.com/post/60137039416/... Seems a shame there isn't a standard for mapping hardware to generic UI controls, the way MIDI is ubiquitous in audio production. All video apps support control surfaces of some kind but Avid/Tangent/Filmlight/Davinci/Lightworks panels all use their own closed protocols and I'm not aware of any of them having been reverse-engineered :(

jestar_jokin 11y ago

With a bit of work, you can get similar functionality using off-the-shelf MIDI controllers and AutoHotKey. Here's my efforts: - Map sliders and buttons on a Novation Nocturn to media keys (volume, play, stop, mute etc). - Map a foot pedal (Behringer FCB1010) to a virtual joystick, for use in Euro Truck Simulator 2. AHK is super powerful for Windows automation, so I'm sure you create more sophisticated mappings that tweak the "Saturation" value when a certain window or dialog is open. I think given the range of MIDI controllers available, this would give you more options for physical inputs. Can you imagine using a "Yamaha WX5 MIDI Wind Controller" to control Photoshop?