# Modern Problems Require Modern Solutions!



## Unknown (Feb 1, 2021)

I went upstairs to go for a pee and on the way to the bathroom I noticed in my spare room was a keystation 88 that I totally forgot I bought last year. I had been looking to buy a modulation wheel but I urgently needed one right away so I decided to take the keystation downstairs. The only problem was, I needed my main piano for composition so I decided to put the keystation on it's side and now I can control the modulation temporarily until I purchase a new one xD

When it comes to problems, sometimes you have to improvise and adapt! please forgive my messy work station.


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## jcrosby (Feb 1, 2021)

Looks like you made yourself a bitchin keytar!
Necessity is the mother of invention.

(Not to be confused with The Mothers of Invention)


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## MartinH. (Feb 2, 2021)

Since we've often seen people asking for a standalone modwheel, I've wondered if it's maybe possible to "extract" the relevant section from a lowend keystation keyboard and get rid of the keys part and only keep the chassis and electronics that are needed for the modwheel to work. 
To me it looks like on this model the key part can internally be detatched with a cable:


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## ReleaseCandidate (Feb 2, 2021)

MartinH. said:


> Since we've often seen people asking for a standalone modwheel, I've wondered if it's maybe possible to "extract" the relevant section from a lowend keystation keyboard and get rid of the keys part and only keep the chassis and electronics that are needed for the modwheel to work.


Actually it would be easier hooking up the modwheel to a Teensy and using that. 




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Products







www.pjrc.com








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Teensyduino: Using USB MIDI with Teensy on the Arduino IDE







www.pjrc.com


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## el-bo (Feb 2, 2021)

Unknown said:


> I went upstairs to go for a pee and on the way to the bathroom I noticed in my spare room was a keystation 88 that I totally forgot I bought last year.


Once sentence;Too many questions


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## Unknown (Feb 2, 2021)

el-bo said:


> Once sentence;Too many questions


Even composers have to pee sometime :D


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## el-bo (Feb 2, 2021)

Unknown said:


> Even composers have to pee sometime :D


Presumably more than once a year, no?


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## MartinH. (Feb 2, 2021)

ReleaseCandidate said:


> Actually it would be easier hooking up the modwheel to a Teensy and using that.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


What a fascinating idea! I just watched some videos about the Teensy and it seems like these things have become surprisingly accessible. I had never heard of it before but I've seen some impressive projects made with it and people seem to be praising how easy it is to develop with. This looks like a tempting rabbithole to go into. Thanks a lot for the recommendation!


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## ReleaseCandidate (Feb 2, 2021)

MartinH. said:


> What a fascinating idea! I just watched some videos about the Teensy and it seems like these things have become surprisingly accessible. I had never heard of it before but I've seen some impressive projects made with it and people seem to be praising how easy it is to develop with. This looks like a tempting rabbithole to go into. Thanks a lot for the recommendation!


I did make a hand-wired numpad with it some years ago. I can't say how easy or hard MIDI programming is with it though.


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## MartinH. (Feb 2, 2021)

ReleaseCandidate said:


> I did make a hand-wired numpad with it some years ago. I can't say how easy or hard MIDI programming is with it though.


Do you think it would be possible to build a little box with 2 USB ports and a Teensy in it, that reads keypresses from a connected keyboard and outputs preprogrammed keypress macros, pretending to the OS that it's coming from a normal keyboard?
With keyboard I mean something like a little numpad keyboard, not a midi keyboard.


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## ReleaseCandidate (Feb 2, 2021)

MartinH. said:


> Do you think it would be possible to build a little box with 2 USB ports and a Teensy in it, that reads keypresses and outputs keypress macros, pretending to the OS that it's coming from a normal keyboard?


That would actually be not that easy, because you need to connect the second USB bus and the Teensy (Arduino) has to act as a UCB host (there are USB host libraries) and you have to translate and forward the keys. But keyboards that can send arbitrary macros work as 2 devices, one device is the 'normal' keyboard, the other HID device sends the output of the macros.
Two easy solutions:
Make some buttons (like a numpad) and send the macros with the keypresses. The library I used has support for arbitrary sized numpads and macros - I deleted that not so long ago, so I don't know which library it has been. Geekhack and Deskthority had been the sites with information.

Or buy a programmable keyboard (first google result)




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Best Programmable Mechanical Keyboards


Guide for choosing the best programmable mechanical keyboard. Learn about macro keys, function layers, hardware vs software programming and more customization options.




www.mechtype.com





Ah, looks like Teensy 3.6 has a USB host port already:




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USB keyboard hardware proxy


What I want to build: a device into which I can plug in my keyboard and that will look like a USB keyboard if I plug it into a USB host of any kind that accepts a keyboard. The idea is for it to be all in hardware, such that no driver software is needed on the host. By default it'd proxy all key...



forum.pjrc.com


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## pmcrockett (Feb 2, 2021)

MartinH. said:


> Since we've often seen people asking for a standalone modwheel, I've wondered if it's maybe possible to "extract" the relevant section from a lowend keystation keyboard and get rid of the keys part and only keep the chassis and electronics that are needed for the modwheel to work.
> To me it looks like on this model the key part can internally be detatched with a cable:



I've disassembled an old M-Audio Radium 49, which I expect is built similarly to the Keystation. To use only the mod wheel, you'd end up with just one approx. 3" x 9" circuit board that has both the mod wheel connection and the back panel jacks for MIDI and power supply. You'd need to construct a mount for the mod wheel assembly, though, unless you want to take up all the space of the original case (or saw off the end of case with the original mod wheel mount).


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## MartinH. (Feb 3, 2021)

pmcrockett said:


> I've disassembled an old M-Audio Radium 49, which I expect is built similarly to the Keystation. To use only the mod wheel, you'd end up with just one approx. 3" x 9" circuit board that has both the mod wheel connection and the back panel jacks for MIDI and power supply. You'd need to construct a mount for the mod wheel assembly, though, unless you want to take up all the space of the original case (or saw off the end of case with the original mod wheel mount).



Awesome, good to know this works!




ReleaseCandidate said:


> That would actually be not that easy, because you need to connect the second USB bus and the Teensy (Arduino) has to act as a UCB host (there are USB host libraries) and you have to translate and forward the keys. But keyboards that can send arbitrary macros work as 2 devices, one device is the 'normal' keyboard, the other HID device sends the output of the macros.
> Two easy solutions:
> Make some buttons (like a numpad) and send the macros with the keypresses. The library I used has support for arbitrary sized numpads and macros - I deleted that not so long ago, so I don't know which library it has been. Geekhack and Deskthority had been the sites with information.
> 
> ...


You're right! I totally forgot that the connected keyboard doesn't just output data without a proper usb connection and that does indeed sound a bit daunting for a first project. I'll have to think about something easier. So cool to see that someone on Geekhack printed their own ergonomic mouse: 




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3d printed ergo mouse with board using PMW3360 optical sensor under $10


3d printed ergo mouse with board using PMW3360 optical sensor under $10



geekhack.org





I've thought about something similar before since there's only one mouse that I like, but they keep breaking so damn quickly. I ended up watching this 75 minute rant about the switches in mouse buttons: 


It seems to be possible to make a mouse from scratch with the teensy, but I haven't seen anyone do it with an optical sensor, so I'd imagine that's also too advanced for me right now. 

I'll just take a look around on the sites you mentioned and check some tutorials on youtube and eventually I might think of something that is actually useful to me and not too complicated. Thanks a lot again!


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