This topic contains 23 replies, has 7 voices, and was last updated by 
guyot 7 years, 11 months ago.
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just to confrim.
Will those pushon encoder of the upper row ever used or needed?
I’m now trying to replace all encoders on my BCR+Zaq to more quality ones and with detents (more ergonomic for Seq IMHO) and here’s a question if those buttons will never be used then I can just replace upper row using same encoders as for lower row. Can someone confirm?
Thanks in advancethat remains to be seen… can you tell us what encoder you are using? do you have a link?
i would also love some pics if possible!
I’m still in planning\ordering stage. But it seems that ALPS EC12E2420803 will fit OK.
http://www.alps.com/prod/info/E/HTML/Encoder/Incremental/EC12E/EC12E2420803.html
And those detents will be great for sequencing (more tactile feedback).
Still the question with buttons is pending because ALPS don’t have simmilar encoder with push on and it’s really favirable to have the same response over all rows.
I’ll share the results and pics when I’ll be done (not only encoder customizing).
If no pushon will be used at least in some near future then it’ll be esear for me to start modding.:) (faster You’ll get pics and modding report ;))Cheers.
BTW… Still If it would be possible to customize firmware IMHO from ergonomic side it’ll be even cooler to swith PCB’s layout to have all 4 rows of encoder on the upper side and 2 rows of buttons underneath.
Hi Egor,
interesting idea to replace the encoders.
I am definitely interested in how this will play out, please keep us posted here!Unfortunately, I would highly recommend finding push encoders for the top row, though.
It is definitely planned in the future to use them for different (and also important) functions. The problem is that the BCR is running out of buttons, and I want to avoid double functions on the buttons if possible.yesss! and you could make an extra row of buttons wired into the push functionality of the stock first row. brilliant! i want to do this too.
Yes rewiring buttons and ordenary encoder could be done like adding 3rd row of buttons. But shifting PCB’s will need minor customizing (rewiring) of encoders and this could’nt be done by User. All this could lead of course to a next level ZAQ using same hardware and a bit of DIY. But wouldn’t be possible without Zaq’s will and input
But if this experiment is interesting to Zaq I could try all this including all DIY work and then sharing plans with community with my own BCR on my own risk. I surely don’t need it as a controller anyway. So I’m free to experiment.
But anyway it won’t be ergonomic to have encoders row’s shifted without frimware update I mean 1-8 steps under 25-32Great idea to make an extra row of buttons along with the encoders!
Unfortunately, with all the Zaquencer-related things to do (just look at the Feature wishes thread), I don´t think we can support a dedicated firmware mod for the probably few people who want to mod their hardware.
But the good news is, I´m not sure if it´s even needed if you only plan to move the top encoder row to the bottom. When you try and think it through, it´s hard to find a usecase where moving the top row to the bottom would break things. Sure, the global params would be in a different position, but that´s no worry. All the sequence params can be freely set across the board and should correctly wrap around. The only thing that would be off will be the step number display in the LCD, but that´s no biggie in my mind.
Can you think of other things?
I just think that offsetting each time loop start so all row’s would be in correct order is some what un-ergonomic and cumbersome especially for live sequencing. Also this could lead to wrong visual interpretation of patterns and fails in changing patterns.
BTW I don’t know how the firmware is build and I’m no programmer at all, but isn’t this custom firmware will just be remapping numbers of encoders in OS and wont hassle with all other code?
I ask that because for eg in midibox firmware (if i remember correctly) You could just remap encoders in one place of code and everything worked correctly. In case You’ve wired something wrong to shifregisters.The way I see it, you´d only have to set sequence start on one pattern and then copy that as a default pattern to all slots and start working from there. This should take about one minute and will then give you the exact workflow of the original.
What exactly do you mean by “wrong visual interpretation of patterns and fails in changing patterns”?
Remapping the encoders is only part of the work. Maintaining, versioning and testing a second flavor of the software is the bigger part.
I really don´t think it´ll be a problem at all to just use the original firmware for this mod and it still working as intended. Everything should really wrap around correctly.
Do you already have a Zaquencer running? Please check it out in detail for your intended change. If you find something that would really break with your intended mod, let me know and I might re-think my position.A bit of update… finally resoldered all encoders… ALPS ones (more quality) with deents… but… One problem I have now… each detent shifts parameters but 2 points not 1 so ergonomics is ruined… And I think there are no such encoders with more detents available…
And here one question rises… if there’s a possibility to tune encoder response in firmware so that encoders with detents would function as they normaly should one point- one point of parameter. This would really bring ergonomics of this sequencer up.would you happen to have some pics of your work? or a link to your knob source?
it sounds kick arse!
I’d better shoot everything when It’ll be ready… source of the encoders is one local shop. But those are ordinary ALPS. part number EC12E2420803 ENCODER, VERTICAL, 12MM, 24DET,24PPR
Egor, is there any progress or this idea? i would love to hear more!
Not for now… I’ve replaced all encoder for mentioned above… no case work still.
And this detent issue just makes me mad really. I mean using this encoder means 1 detent 2 notes and that’s not very convinient. To remove detents means to loose ergonomics. And ZAQ didn’t answer about possibility to change firmware to get rid of this behaviour.
BTW I don’t think that this could bring difficulties to normal units as they don’t have detents and nobody would really see any change.christian seems to have gone on holiday…
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