Check out the Timepod by Modern MIDI.
Love the idea. Why have a 4×4 encoder controller when you can have a 4×4 encoder controller with presets and morph? But looks like it’s still very pre-production. Lot of details still missing.
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Can I just say one thing?
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Painful. Hopefully you can dim the lights.
If you dont use a DAW… er is this useful?
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Seems to me like it be much less useful with a DAW. With a DAW you could do all of this with automation after all.
I picture using it the same way as I might use a faderfox or MIDI Fighter Twister to control, say, my DN — but with the added ability to trigger presets and morph between them in a kind of like OT scenes.
But again, not a lot of details, so don’t know how feasible this would be.
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Do we know if its gonna have a midi out port? (Not only usb)
Midi out, even TRS would be attractive. Or USB midi host perhaps…
Plenty of scope for this if the developer is aiming to carve out an innovative niche… if it has enough CPU onboard, to be a lot of different things … multi page note/CC sequencer etc
I’m already imagining how the presets/morph could be great in a dawless setup. You could set up each preset to be your intro, verse, drop, etc. One initial thought I have, is that only 8 preset slots is not a lot. I wonder if it could have “pages” you could scroll through, with 8 presets on each “page”? Could plan out an entire live set that way.
EDIT posed this question and received an answer on that YouTube comment section. “Hi, there are 8 banks of 16 configurable parameters, each bank having up to 8 snapshots.”
Side note: anyone know what that Euclidean sequencer program he was using was?
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I’ve experimented a lot with this sort of stuff, eg turn one knob, sixteen CC’s are sent.
I’ve learned this: MIDI can’t handle it currently. Certainly not DIN or USB. You might be able to send 16CC’s to one synth and everything works okay, but then send notes as well and they’ll be late.
RTP-MIDI works fine for this but obviously no good unless your hardware has the ports etc.
My guess is, this’ll work fine for some applications but not for others. Giving this a DIN port of any kind is asking for a lot of customer complaints.
That’s my opinion and experience anyway!
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Kickstarter mail:
"Originally, I had planned for the current hardware to be final. But now, I want to surprise you all with some exciting upgrades at no additional cost to you.
First, Timepod will now feature a significantly more powerful computing chip. I’ve been hesitant to change the chip as this requires us to completely reroute the boards and rewrite a lot of the code in the firmware. But because of the resounding success of our launch, I want to show my appreciation by going the extra mile to make Timepod truly futureproof.
The upgraded chip will allow for much more advanced software integrations in Timepod, such as instant MIDI mapping assignments (e.g. inbound MIDI auto learn), real-time communication with the desktop app, additional onboard banks, more extensive customization options, MIDI 2.0 support and more.
And most importantly, with the new chip, we will now be able to add the highly requested MIDI ports to Timepod! This has been the most requested feature from our community. We have listened, and are now looking into adding TRS MIDI in and out ports so that you can use Timepod to directly communicate with hardware synthesizers and devices. "
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Now that this has midi ports it looks very appealing. Will keep my eyes on this.
From the latest update it sounds like these are getting boxed up for shipping very soon. Great to see it coming through, regretting not grabbing an early one as it would be great for controlling perfs on rytm. Price will surely go up once they hit market proper. Anyone here back this?
I wonder if midi 2.0 will solve the bottleneck?
Almost certainly as it has far greater bandwidth. OG MIDI is ancient by today’s standards!
There are ways around it if you can process the MIDI, like no duplicates (don’t send a value if it’s the same as the last), thinning the data (eg send every 3rd message only).
The Hapax does this with CC automation, it works well and solves the problem.
I wonder if they could implement something like that here?
Some overlap here with this:
Both look interesting!
Looks like despite delivering Kickstarter units, they never got it to the shelves. Weird.
Now the upcoming Oxi E16 offers something quite similar.
Hi there, I’m the creator of Timepod.
We had faced delays for the public launch due to the whole tariff situation wreaking havoc on global supply chains, but we’re getting close 
It looks like OXI took quite a bit of inspiration from us. But I think hardware wise, nothing will come close to the quality of Timepod 
we’ll be dropping a video to showcase everything in detail soon.
Thanks for your interest!
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Love that it can sequence, I might be quite sold on this!
Only other thing with knobs I’m aware of that can sequence is this: Doepfer A-155 – Thomann UK
Hi Alex, it seems like now you have midi connection for hardware gears with all units no ? I have a quick question tho. I would like to know transition time limit. Thanks.
One thing oxi has advantage over timepod is screen. After experiencing roto control, it’s hard to go back to midi controller without one
Hi Salabi, yes we have TRS-A in and out ports now.
As for your second question, are you referring to the auto morph transition time? Currently, the max is 16 seconds. However, if needed I can easily update the firmware to increase it.
Tbh I am not a fan of low-res greyscale screens. They cannot display many characters, and also looks very ugly imo.
Aesthetics was a major factor in developing Timepod, which is why we engineered it with continuous/seamless LED rings using a dual-layer PCB design. Dotted LED rings look dated and result in dull and dim colors due to the fact that the LEDs are on a single layer PCB, which causes light diffusion due to the distance from the LEDs to the rings (this is why dotted rings are common–they are simple and cheap to engineer for).
I personally don’t need to use screens since I always map my parameters in a layout that’s easy for me to remember, but I definitely see the value in being able to see labels.
I am working on adding the ability to set knob labels in the desktop app, so that you can have the app open while using Timepod and see all the labels. The labels will be sync’d when you change banks on your Timepod, and the upside is that it will be super easy to configure the labels using your computer’s keyboard.
I am also considering developing a high-res full color screen add-on if our sales do well enough to justify the development costs.
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