Yesterday I found an HID footcontroller that is intended for transcription software at a thrift store, for just a few bucks. It’s got three pedals: two small ones at each side, and a broad one in the middle. It’s mighty sturdy.
Of course, my immediate thought was to control Zynthian with it.
For simple stuff I can make a udev rule and so on to present it as a keyboard. But the stuff I’d like to control are at least the following:
- cycle through zs3’s
- rec/overdub sooperlooper (or trigger the single pedal control - of which I don’t like the pause function - but that’d be another issue of its own).
- cycle through sooperlooper loops
The first of this could be done by adding a CUIA to cycle (zs3_next stops at the end now). But the rest are more difficult (tied to a specific processor which may not even be available).
So I thought about presenting this as a USB device to the Zynthian (outputting note on and off events, or cc 0 and 127 values), so that:
- it could do midi-learning, and/or:
- I could write a device controller for it.
The last would mean I could e.g. use the left pedal to cycle through modes, getting all kinds of stuff done.
Now I can’t seem to find out how to present this as a USB Midi device, so that Zynthian recognizes it as such. Kernel driver writing is something I’ve never explored, and would like to steer clear of.
Does anybody here have any tricks up their sleeve, or alternative solutions that could be cleaner or of more use to more people? Generic HID->MIDI layer, ctrldev drivers for virtual MIDI devices? HID-ctrldev? Anyone want to use a joystick for pitch-bend? Adding a CUIA that issues MIDI CC events to current chain/global?
