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Laptop Macgyvering
Thanks for the email on the spam bots Mark. They're insidious. I turned off all anonymous posting. I will post more on general enzymind stuff later.
On an unrelated topic Mark: I want to use my laptop's keyboard as a footpedal for recording and playing audio loops with software. Kind of like the hardware looper pedal I showed you. I want more functionality. I got the idea from this guy. I want to make some kind of mechanical overlay that I can velcro or loosely attach to my ibm t42 thinkpad keyboard so that I can map various QWERTY single key macros and use my feet to start and stop recording and playback of loops while playing guitar. I.e. put laptop on floor and -gently- step on buttons which are spaced far enought appart. Maybe somehwere around 8-16 different foot bottons spread across the keyboard.
I need some kid of rigid support panel, maybe good old acrylic sheet, but I have yet to devise a pricise, cheap and *reletively gentle* way of transmitting foot button pushes to the underlying keys. Ideally I would like metal springed momentary switches that upon full 'stomp' deflection only just barely push the keyboard keys...but that's going to be complicated. Any thoughts on footswtich engineering Mark?
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Foot keys
I can imagine this working well. I would start with a 3/16" acrylic sheet or high density masonite that just overlaps the sides and "wrist" front of the laptop, with a border that snaps or anchors it well. Drill 1/4 - 1/2" holes directly over the keys used. The "pedals" would be stiff strips (maybe same as the surface) hinged on the top surface along the "wrist" front of the keyboard. A pad at the "screen" end of the pedal would press the key, through a hole. All springs would be on top.
With the right pedal widths, it might be possible to not hassle with a true hinge or springs: rigidly attach at the pivot (red) and shim (green) to keep the pad (orange) just off the key. The stiffness of the pedal would provide the spring.
16 sounds like a lot for toes. But perhaps some could be more raised, and the less used ones lower so they don't get hit by accident.
I have some white scrap acylic that would be fine, at least to try out the basic concept. Maybe you can come up to my shop one of these days.
Good design
This is exactly the kind of insight I was looking for. Things I like about this are: a.) it provides a relatively large key-area for the foot to hit and b.) it allows for the key to have a positive stop against the solid surface of the underlying support protecting the keyboard keys. I'm going to need to keep the touch pad open though so that may complicate the nice inherent materials-spring feature. Mark when's a good time for you for helping me with prototyping in your shop? Alternatively do you know of any good ie cheap places for plastic bits in town?
here's my sketch:
it pushes against the bottom of the screen and shoulders over the edges on the sides to keep it aligned. Ideally the whole foot key adapter thing would be pretty flat so that I could carry it easily with a laptop in a laptop shoulder bag.
foot pedal construction
Tomorrow (Wed.) during the day would be good. Otherwise MWF next week might work.
I have enough material to try things out, maybe make the whole thing. Multi-craft plastic (Monroe St.?) is good for many sheet and other plastic needs. They used to have small scrap by the pound.
Footkeys prototype
I put together a prototype 'footkeys' pedal. It works ok. The acrylic keys have pegs and use the springs in the computer's keyboard.
I was in Portland for the past month doing music but I have not yet had a chance to try using the footkey setup live yet, however I hope to do so in the near future. I posted a few 3 part loop test riffs made with the setup here .
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