Foot Piano

[joshebosh]

Hello,

I looking for a solution to create a foot piano... long story short I invest a ridiculous amount of money at pedalmidikit.org (dont waste your time or money here) for some AGO organ pedals that supposed to interface with USB midi... well, while the wood craftsmanship is great, the electronic brains were some very poor magnet and reed switch design using arduino... so i'm left with an 70 pound paper weight... what a waste... it doesnt work reliably AT ALL!

Anyways, i found this website, and the solution looks promising...
I'm thinking about building my own pedal box, using MIDI Expression Quatro and Yamaha FC-3A pedals...
I would like to have like 3 octaves of pedals... Looks like that will require like 9 quatros...
But before I invest that kind of money, I'd like some assurances that this solution would work.

I watched all the videos on the website, and it looks like this site the closest solution to what i'm looking for...

1. Will the eDRUMin 10 provide note velocity for 10 pedals to simulate piano via pedaling?
2. or will I need the Quatro? If Quatro, is it possible to procure a 12 port unit? Where by I can purchase 3 units, 1 for each octave?
3. the most important aspect of my journey is to end up with velocity sensitive just like piano, which i can play with my feet...

thanks

[Rob]

You don't want the eDRUMin, which interfaces with piezoes. The Quattro / FC3-A combo should work well. Why don't you first buy one and test. If you're not happy you can return it for a refund.

[joshebosh]

Rob, thanks for the reply! I'm really liking what you offer...
Perhaps your quattros might be just the midi equipment I need to replace the garbage reed switches in my organ pedals...

Here's the overview of what i'm dealing with

Screenshot 2021-05-13 20.52.02.png (187.81 KiB) Viewed 1893 times

looking at the front face of pedals

Screenshot 2021-05-13 21.08.00.png (229.5 KiB) Viewed 1893 times

looking on the inside, just seeing this cheap trash reed switches make me angry

Screenshot 2021-05-13 21.08.27.png (400.19 KiB) Viewed 1893 times

If I try to salvage the pedals I'll need 8 quattros...

Question for you, instead of getting getting a bunch of FC3A pedals, would have a recommendation of parts I could acquire and mount to my pedels to provide the same functionality as the FC3 pedals? I can manage part replacements, but I'm not to sure which parts are need for velocity types pedaling...

[Rob]

I can see why you would want to keep the wood work. Does your existing setup produce velocity sensitive notes? From what I can see, it doesn't look like it does.

[joshebosh]

Ya, great woodwork, sh**ty electronics... I paid extra to have the creator put in "hall effect" so I could do velocity, and it's supposed to, but some pedals dont work, some pedals are loud when touched softly, some are soft sound when hit harder... nothing is consistant... I pulled the electrical tape off one and it looked like there was a resistor, capcitor, and and 3 prong transistor under there, but i believe he said it was a reed switch, cause you and see the bolt has a magnet glued to it, yet the green pcb arent even aligned properly under the magnet bolts... but i'm so pissed i paid extra $500 just for the velocity function, but looks like the italian dude put $20 worth of junk in there... I was cheated on this import from italy...

So I dont know what parts make up a half-sustain pedal (best I can tell that's what an FC3A is called), but if I knew what parts make up a proper, higher quality velocity mechanism, I could purchase those parts, solder in to 1/4 jack... The more i look things over your equipment, website, videos all look very professional, hight quality, and trustworthy... I need real working solution here that will last a few years... not break the moment it shows up in mail and assembled... I just got the pedals a couple weeks ago and something already broke electrically, ive only played it twice...

Do you know what physical/electrical parts make up the velocity/sustain pedal? I just dont trust this wireless crap...

[joshebosh]

I just purchased your midi expression single port... I look forward to reviewing it as a possible solution here...

[Rob]

First, if you're looking for velocity sensitive notes from my devices, I would need adjust some settings to keep the note playing while the foot was pressed down. The implementation on MIDI Expression is designed for drums so a bit of development on my part would be needed to have it work well for your use case.

The transistor you see is likely a hall effect sensor. Translating the movements of a pedal to consistent velocity sensitive notes is not easy, and I suspect this is where most of issues lie.

Unfortunately, my current generation if MIDI Expression devices do not properly support hall effect sensors, otherwise you could just wire the sensor to a TRS jack and be good to go. If you wanted to use a Quattro to read those sensors, you would need to power the sensors separately with a 3.3v power supply--not too hard to do, just inconvenient.

[Rob]

BTW, the single input device can directly read hall sensors without expernal power.

[joshebosh]

I'm not a skilled electronics guy, but I can do basic stuff...
I spent 2k on these pedals so far... sounds like I'm gonna have to spend another 1k on (8) quattro's to replace the trash it came with...

I just need to get this done right... After a bit of research, I have the impression that I would completely rip out all these hall effect sensors and magnets as they are complete garbage, and install something similar to a slide potentiometer, as I've see the DIY expression pedals are a knob potentiometer... I didnt want to go down this route of have to build my own solution, but I have no choice... hall sensors dont work... I want something more reliable...

But I really dont know...
What parts would you suggest to replace the hall sensors?
What parts interface the best with your Midi Expression?
I'm not concerned about hard or easy on my part.
I would like to know from your opinion, what electric parts would interface best with my pedals, to your equipment, to provide supreme, reliable, veloicty note sensitivity?

[Rob]

Don't replace the hall effect sensors. They just need to be processed properly. What part number are they?