Pardon the too late to be useful comment, with all that bulk it’s attached to, some sort of crafted wood transport cover for the LCD might be a wise addition.
Mounted on the inside of a hinged door might provide a display tilt adjuster as well.
Mr @wyleu !!
I hope you take this beauty with you to the first Zynthian Party. As we discussed some time ago, while cycling BCN, it’s something we have to do… and i should organize. Everybody likes Formentera? 
Cheers!
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Having played with loopers and written the note to chord plugin I decided I needed more than the one pedal so I went to my shed and cut up some timber, plywood and steel, I broke open some switches to obtain springs, etc. By the evening I had the startings of a pedaboard but… during a break today (recovering from carrying concrete fence posts - they are heavy man!) I saw the Behringer FCB1010 is just £90. I had discounted buying a new controller due to price but either the price has dropped or my effort in the shed has altered my cost / benefit analysis. So I am considering buying one. This has 10 foot switches, 2 variable pedals and 2 more switches that work as bank shift or can be used for something else under some conditions. It only has MIDI input and output / thru (merge) plus a couple of relay switch outputs - no USB. My questions to the group are:
- Have you had any experience with this (or other) pedal boards?
- Do you have any advice to a potential buyer?
They seem to remain popular with their owners - I don’t see many second hand. The only one I found was asking the same price as a new one! I am very tempted. They are pretty big but I could get rid of my Zoom pedal and just use Zynthian + FCB1010 for my guitar effects. (Sorry @wyleu for diverting the thread but you seem to be done with it!!!)
Don’t you believe it, I’m on my third screen ( screws on mounts separated the double sided tape holding the display body to the glass ) and I’m still building the rest of the rig.
I have the new version of the HID code to load up on the pedalboard (thanks @smiths73v3 ) and still muttering about parameter control over this … 
With regards to pedal board construction the essence of this is make it sturdy , then double it. And imagine how it fails … What do you do, that doesn’t involve taking your fingers of your instrument.
The arduino pedal board stuff has proved rock solid in this regard and I might well take a 5 pin MIDI out simply to route with the rest of the MIDI stuff… ( The motor 61 seems to fail on occasional MIDI off notes on USB which does not effect the 5 pin MIDI so I’m using that at the moment, as a base level)
Hi @riban, I do not own a FCB1010 but I was tempted to buy one too. Here in France, you can get it between 50 and 90 € second hand, while it’s around 110€ brand new. So far I’ve seen, it is really popular with 4,5/5 over 115 notes on Audiofanzine, a reference website for musician freaks.
What I remain:
- its strongness is really appreciated
- it has got a bunch of controls
- the display is readable even under sunlight
- needs a dedicated PSU
- programing the hardware from the pedalboard itself looks like a nightmare, but there is a dedicated software for that (under windows I presume) that should/could make things easyer
There’s a dedicated website it https://www.fcb1010.eu/
Hi @riban
The only minor drawback is the very slight noise / hum from the source.
Otherwise, I didn’t find anything else to blame him for.
I bought a FCB1010 on second hand. And another investment was in the chip Un02 (50EUR) from https://www.fcb1010.eu/uno2.html
I have no experience with other brands,
My experience with FCB1010 in rig
Cheers! I have ordered one. Hopefully the electromechanical noise isn’t too intrusive. (The PSU in one of my keyboards is so noisy I have to leave it turned off most of the time!) I don’t want to pay the extra for a different ROM. I am pretty sure it will interface with the Zynthian well and I can use the Zynthian to process the MIDI if required but if I can’t I may end up ripping out its own electronics and replacing them with my own design - but this thing is brand new so I would prefer to use it as-is for a while. There is a 10 day lead time on delivery so I have time to forget I ordered it and accept it as a suprise gift in a couple of weeks!
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I have owned FCB1010 for quiet a while, then sold it because it was not convenient for my needs — too large, heavy and no portable power. Switched to Pedalino mini, it does a great job supporting and can be very much customized (far beyond FCB). Pedalino mini supports all sorts of midi connections, buttons, rotary controllers, faders, continuous controllers (continuous sustain pedal is supported by Pianoteq). It also now supports addressed leds, so every action can have separate color or custom brightness. Can be powered and run from battery/powerbank. Small and reliable — happy with it ! I use it with iPad and LoopyHD (best software looper I’ve found) and of course with zynthian.
Check this out at Guthub
P.s. it was mentioned before here at the forum.
Indeed I could build something but the physical construction is challenging. I was building something and this would have been a good companion but I stopped when I found the FCB1010. I could retro fit something like Pedalino if I need the functionality. Cheers!
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Good idea about retrofitting. Builtin system of asigning controllers in FCB1010 is not at all user friendly. Complicated and not intuitive.
Pardon the abstract tangent, this pedalboard design with 4 encoders and 3.5" LCD looks so ready for a Zynthian to be dropped in.
Massive Teensy-Based MIDI Controller Is Operated By Foot
Hackster write-up . . . . . . Autodesk Fusion 360 & .stl 3D print enclosure and button design files
The rest of the project design files
Looks like he’s trying to make it strong, with a separate support tower and cover support screw point for each switch, poly-carbonate might be the strongest printer material.
5 Likes
It looks neat and I am impressed with the effort and detail put into this design but I wonder how robust it is (under the foot of a thrash metal guitarist) and how easy it is to pick out each button with the toe of a size 10 boot? I just got the Behringer FCB1010 which is spaced pretty much the same as I had designed my own (wooden) pedalboard with large space between adjacent pedals and second, elevated tier pedals set back but between the first to give good access by foot.
I’ve never seen the sense in having encoders down at floor level. I’ve used a Roland triple looper and frankly you ended up with back ache 
The ruggedness is presumably down to how solid the switches are,then you choose between solid enough not to move or so light it gets moved by any rattling of the cables…
I’m thinking about an attached bit of carpet in front to keep it in place with mine.
The FBC1010 is a big chunk of metal so weighs quite a bit. It hasn’t moved yet!
Had Google weigh it in at 9.5 lbs
I like the combinations of controls.
One alternative is the Noise Machine controller, a rough edged design that earned CA$ 27,672 kickstarter funding and sells for $79.99
Might get similar functionality for less with tactile buttons overlaid on a cell phone app’s screen.
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For anyone with a FCB1010 pedalboard with standard firmware I have created a Python class to send and receive sysex data. It allows saving / loading data to / from comma separated variable file which facilitates simpler editing of the data. You can find it on github.
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Might be worth mentioning here, the “MIDI Expression” adapters for old foot switches, expression (pot) pedals or piezo drum heads, these boxes adapt them for USB or DIN MIDI outputs.
They auto adapt to the pedal type and can be further tuned with their app. There is one paid “DSP Trigger” app that extracts more detail from your drum hit.
audiofront.net also has a drumhead adapter with 10 inputs. And a number of demo videos.
The last video shows their VST/AS plugin (no LV2 yet) that allows more short term adapter box settings to be assigned a single patch.
Well I’ve got the soldering iron out on a Worx battery charger and added an horrible 2.5mm socket (spit…)
But what it does mean is there is now a way of powering the pedalboard entirely from a Battery source.
Not very keen on what might happen if I get a short on the 20V line and I’d love to use a more substantial connector but I doubt I could get anything too sensible into the Worx charger box.
In this particular rig I’m also using an external sound config.
This includes the UMC-404HD powered from the Pi’s 5 Volt via USB. Possibly not recommended but it works and the pedalboard can shake the room! admittedly from a mains powered bass guitar amp but lets see if it flies with a class D!
It’s certainly quiet! I’ve had a lot of heartache from noisy DC power supplies and this is wonderful.
So the whole rig to stereo audio out is …
With no mains requirement.
I will probably do exactly the same to another Worx PSU and drive a small class DC amplifier directly from a seperate battery supply…
I wonder how long the battery will last???
so far
Well an hour and a half now…
About three hours for the 2Amp cell
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hum hum: 
Nice rig CHris
Why thank you.
I will attempt some recording this week when I have a handy bass guitarist to inhabit at least one of the 404 sockets.