The Aeros shows lots of promise and is bumping against the limits of the footswitch UI design. Many actions need to happen in real time on button press. There are many features and only so many buttons. Use of on-screen buttons and external midi controllers help in some situations, but sidestep the core issue. Musicians need their hands free, loopers operate in real time, and a large, costly add on pedal may not be an option.
Idea: Create more foot actions that don’t conflict with button press actions.
For example, pressing two buttons can be be detected before a single button press is debounced. This can provide three more basic events that are realtime (like button press) and do not conflict with other actions (unlike hold and double press).
Idea: Create a way to activate non-realtime commands without tying up button down on any one button.
Ideally one of the above “chord commands” becomes a standard way to bring up more features. This can be used to access a grab bag of other commands which SS us struggling to add (without relying on a midi controller). For example, press both stop/start and the left button any time to pop up a menu with more actions. The scroll wheel and the buttons take on new meaning when this is menu is displayed. Think of this as similar to the way we bring up the mixer (which I think SS should remove from button hold).
Idea: Think about which actions need to be realtime (button press) and which related actions are compatible with that. Press + Hold and Press + Double Tap can be powerful, but need to be compatible.
I did the “math” on the debounce implementation for “chord commands” last week. SS might have to unroll a few abstractions on how they debounce but it’s pretty doable unless the settle time for the switches is really bad (in which case they have other issues).
It should work. That said, that is easy to say from the comfort of my home…
What I meant by feasible is that any on-press event has to be really accurate, and I am wondering how realistically it could be achieved with 2 buttons. I mean I already clicked on two buttons by mistake, but was it really at the same time ?
On top of this, the display may become a bit messy to show which command is bound to which button.
But it’s not a bad idea to be rejected like that. I think you have to come up with a real-life example to really show the potential.
No need to design the UI to use the chord commands for the real-time actions. But they could free the single buttons to act in real-time on button down. The chord presses would not have to land at the same time, they just need to overlap. I would expect most chords to be “sloppy” and people might “dwell” on them a tad.
The display issue exists today with double click and hold commands not being obvious and not being documented on screen. How do you know left button hold is the mixer?
My guess is that stomping on two buttons might take less “attention” (afterthought?) than a hold or double press.
Definitely could get carried away with this. The idea would be to use the chords sparingly and in standard ways so that they could be remembered. One chord could be the “menu”, another chord the mixer,. That would be enough. Perhaps the last one could be user assigned.
I get the idea but I dread the thought of pressing more than one button at once, possibly the best one would be Play stop all and the leftmost button, the others don’t feel right when doing the action.
Yeah, I know it’s a tradeoff. And it may not be for everyone. We need something like this that frees up the buttons. Might be other ideas.
Play around with it, especially when the Aeros is on a tight pedalboard. Let people choose which chord works for them. IMHO, it’s much harder to double tap (and arguably hold) than to be sloppy and mash two buttons (not in real-time). The buttons on the Aeros don’t require you to cover them to press them.
Once we have the basic feature and trigger, it’s OK to allow for additional ways to trigger this. UI Button, Expression pedal movement/undocked (forget i said that), external midi controller, fantasy external buttons plugged into the exp in, bluetooth remote camera trigger buttons, and, what we all expect, a telepathic Aeros that just nows what you want.
I think the most applicable idea I can think of right now, is if the leftmost button is being held and then the stop all button is clicked it creates a new command. This feels the most natural (heel then tip). We can explore the possibility I’ll ask David.
Definitely, otherwise you’d have a lot of sprained ankles
I initially thought that would be a good default choice as well. But it depends on what’s to the left of the Aeros on your tightly packed board. I think if the BB is there it might be a bit cramped (and this is probably a common setup)
Note that the order of pressing the two buttons should not matter. Heel toe might work for some people. I think of the action as “mash” my foot down sloppily and don’t worry about being precise.
IMHO, it’s a personal preference as to which two buttons triggers which action. Button configuration was a smart choice for the BB and the Aeros would benefit from this choice.
This is an important and delicate part of the Aeros design. Without something like this, there will be other compromises and limitations. Good luck!
