The Superstylonanophone 2 – Foot Controller

[Note: this post was originally a comment on the post ‘The Superstylonanophone‘, but it was hard to find there and the images disappeared when I changed my website. where they were stored.  So I’ve trashed the comment and transferred the text and images here].

I mentioned in the above post that a foot controller would be useful for playing drums via the Superstylonanphone, and that I had added a 15-pin socket to the back of the device for this purpose.

This is the controller I made for it:

Yes, it looks like a length of plastic guttering – but I did say somewhere on the blog that I was looking for low-cost ways of achieving things . . . I found this in my garden shed: it was an offcut left over from a length I bought some time ago at a car boot sale.

The player side is to the left, and the 4 single-pole momentary switches are inclined slightly this way, for ease of use. The two on the left are for hi-hat sounds, the two on the right for bass drum sounds. The 15-pin cable is plugged in on the right hand-side, away from the player’s feet.

Inside you can see the simple connections from the switches to the socket – no electronics required, the Superstylonanophone recognises the switch presses and outputs MIDI instructions accordingly.

(When I connected wires inside the Superstylonanophone, I made a diagram to show which notes or which drums were connected to which of the 15 pins, so I knew which pin to connect to which switch in the foot controller).

This, together with the two styluses, has made playing MIDI drums a little more natural on the Superstylonanophone.

[Edit: this foot controller has had further modifications, albeit for a different purpose.  See here.]