Still no decent midi foot controller pedal for Octatrack in 2023?

I don’t see a DIN MIDI input, which is actually pretty important for my setup (I pass transport controls to the OT trhough the MC6 and Faderfox UC4 a lot, and a 1/8" jack on something that stays on the floor is one misstep away from breaking) but probably not a big deal for a lot of use cases. Looks like areally nice pedal.

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With the secondary functions of the 4 switches, I find it to be plenty. You can long-press and access a different switch function on the same switch, for example.

Plus, their “Flexiports” allow you to connect 3 auxiliary switches in each port, so you could theoretically add 6 more foot switches to the Bridge 4 – Flexiports are multipurpose TRS ports that work for expression pedals, extra switches, extra MIDI I/O, and linking multiple Bridge devices.

I pass MIDI in through a mini TRS jack with an adapter. You could also use the Flexiport for MIDI I/O, and then you would just a TRS to mini TRS cable. The Flexiport allows you to choose which MIDI TRS specification you would like (type A, type B, tip active, etc)

But it sounds like you already have a solution with the Morningstar, yeah? I think that’s a great solution too. I probably wouldn’t have tried Pirate MIDI if Morningstar were in stock when I was looking for a MIDI box.

I know I already responded to this, but I remembered something about the Bridge 6: the way you bank up and down is more comfortable than the Bridge 4. On the Bridge 4 you press both top switches to bank up and both bottom switches to bank down. On the 6 you just use the top and bottom middle switches for the same things. Basically, it’s easier to change banks on the larger one, so in addition to the extra switches, there’s that to consider too.

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Precious detail, i find cumbersome to have to press 2 switches for a basic function.

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I wrote to Pirate MIDI about availability and it seems they’ll have a batch ready soon.
One point where i find they struggle is online communication, maybe hence the few feedbacks available. When a company like Morning Star updates its products quite often and take in consideration the users feedback, it seems Pirate Midi is doing the strict minimum.

For instance, if you’re an australian company and you wanna get international, maybe doing like Hologram and sorting out the customs hassle pre-sending is a good idea. Since the product is not distributed in EU, it would cost me more than an MC6 + paperwork hassle. No, thank you.

Hey, thanks for the opinions on our products here. I wanted to follow up on your comment about our online communication and whether there was anything specifically you’re referring to?

We’re a two-man team with only one of us a firmware programmer. So it takes us a while to get good quality feature upgrades ready and tested. We’re currently working on firmware version 2.0 which is going to have some massive feature updates and performance improvements overall as well. We have a list of at least 30 changes and features we’ll be adding in version 2.0’s updates and have beenn pushing out quite substantial updates as often as possible since we launched the device.

We’re definitely not doing the minimum. We’re actually doing the maximum for what we can possibly accomplish while also doing customer support, assembling stock, shipping orders, and all else that comes with running a business :slight_smile:

Also, regarding bank changes, you can set any switch combination or a single switch to manage bank changes - whichever suits you the best - this is new in firmware version 1.3.1 which was released in May.

We have a Discord server and a Facebook Group where we take lots of user feature suggestions, and we have already implemented a lot of them with the help of a great early beta testing team from within the MIDI foot controller world

We’re always open to hearing more feedback and we’re very grateful for the support in this forum.

Regarding EU availability - we’ve got a couple of plans to fix that in the next 12 months, but for now it’s still an international shipment.

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Hey @PIRATEMIDI, welcome to the forum. I just wanted to let you know I’m liking the dev blog videos you’ve been releasing on your YouTube channel. It’s been great to hear about your big project to refactor the code for 2.0 and all the other updates

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Hey all, jumping in here super late. But I’m the other half of Pirate MIDI and the design engineer. I’m responsible for all of our hardware design, development, and manufacturing, as well as firmware development. So feel free to shoot any questions :slight_smile:

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Great guys to see you reaching out over here. That kind of answer a part of my rant regarding the online reaction :wink:

I can understand the stress that running a company with only 2 people can induce.
From an eventual customer point of view though, as long I can’t hope to get my hands on a Pirate Bridge, it’s gonna be hard to ask further questions about the firmware or anything else. By reading the specs, it seems to me that you developed the product quite far already.

I’ll wait from news about availability in Europe without too much hassle.
All the best until then!

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We ship directly all over the world so there’s no barrier for you. If you were to purchase directly from a retailer, the costs of selling to Europe result in a very similar price compared to being shipped directly :slight_smile:

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The custom barrier is a significant one.
Also having to send back the unit across the whole planet in case of hardware issue.

No worries :slight_smile:

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I bought a 2nd hand SoftStep 2 locally, thinking I would use it with OT. It sat for a while, and then I got it out again a couple of months ago. I programmed one button to be a sustain/hold using the editor software, but something was glitchy. The SoftStep would go back to some preset sometimes and lose my changes.

I thought, OK, I’ll upgrade the firmware. I saw they had done some significant work on the firmware lately. They had an easy way to upgrade (through the new version of the editor software) and a hard way (by pushing a series of SysEx files to the device). I chose the hard way. Unfortunately, during the very first SysEx push, the device went dark and never turned on again.

I contacted KMI support, and they got back to me a couple of weeks later with some questions (there is clearly no warranty remaining on this unit). I took my time responding to them again, and now haven’t heard back. There really doesn’t seem to be anything I can do, because the thing just doesn’t seem to do anything when I connect it over USB anymore. KMI are HQ’ed in the metro area where I live, and I tried to ask if they’d service it for me, but they’re not taking the bait.

If anybody has any experience opening these things up or using special debug modes, LMK. Right now it’s a doorstop (and a very effective one at that! think of all that rubber!).

Not making a sale offer (I know the rules) but this thing might end up only being useful as parts, or to separate out the KMI MIDI Expander, which is really a shame, since all I did was send some SysEx to it to brick it :frowning:

Anyone tried the Boss FS-1-WL?

Boss FS-1-WL has unfortunately only midi PC and CC no note commands

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That’s what’s needed isn’t it? Controlling start/stop/rec etc. Or am I missing something?

Getting an OT in a few days so not very familiar with it’s MIDI settings yet.

A lot of the OT control is through MIDI notes, but there’s a pair of CC numbers (59 and 60) that mimic note-on and note-off messages.

I haven’t used that controller and I’m not familiar with the specs/features. It might be useful to download the latest Octatrack manual and check out the MIDI control reference appendix at the very end of the document.

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Thanks, I’ll look into the OT doc once I get it.

Regarding the MIDI CCs of the FS-1-WL if anyone is interested.

OT uses MIDI Note for many commands. It can also use MIDI CC for parameter control. I have the Boss FS-1-WL and can’t use it for the OT.
Manual C.1 STANDARD NOTE MAPPING Page: 137

I see. Guessing an update of the Boss FS-1-W app with a note mode could possibly allow this.