Option to disable the octave button flashing

[Grrrr]

Hi,

It would be much appreciated to be able to turn of the flashing octave leds. It could be an option in the software for those who wants it not constantly blinking.

For me it is distracting to have a white very bright led flash at a constant rate when it is not in sync with the music playing at the moment. I really don't benefit from different flashing intervals for different octaves. A steady light (or no light) would be enough. I have my ears to hear the octave.

Please make this an option in the software.

Thanks for listening
Gr

[DrRhythm2030]

Please consider adding this option to a firmware update, too.

I currently have electrical tape covering the KeyStep's bright flashing LEDs, and it doesn't look pretty. :-)

[Grrrr]

DrRhythm2030, same here Mine is also covered with ugly tape...

[walzzz]

 
YES! I want this feature too! the flashing light hurt my eyes in the dark. btw you don't need the flash light to remind you the octive. let it flash when you setting it is enough.

[puremusic]

Put me on the list as requesting this too. I thought the brightness of the stop button was a little annoying until I saw the blinking octave button and realized what true annoyance was.

[rossisdead]

Seriously very distracting to have it constantly flashing.

[fungus]

I signed up here just to say this but I see it's already a topic.

Two minutes after unboxing my Keystep I pressed one of those buttons and I was, like, NOOOOOOOOOO! How could they? Who on earth thought it was a good idea to make those buttons flash like that?

Apart from being very, very annoying it simply doesn't work. Can anybody really tell at a glance the difference between one or two octaves up/down by the flash speed? Nope.

One octave up/down should be lit up permanently. Two octaves? Flash then, but not before, and do some sort of flash that's obvious where the octave setting is at (maybe fast 50Hz flashing for two octaves, slower flashing for three).

Can you do PWM on these LEDs for brightness? Make them increase brightness as you go up/down the octaves, eg. 25% brightness for one octave, 50% brightness for two, 100% brightness for three.

PS: Need any help? I'm a freelance programmer of these sort of devices, expert at controlling LEDs.

[fungus]

Put me on the list as requesting this too. I thought the brightness of the stop button was a little annoying until I saw the blinking octave button and realized what true annoyance was.

Yes, these LEDs are far too bright for most situations. I'm betting not many people compose outdoors at noon.

[MajorFubar]

A rotary selector, same style as the Arp Mode and Time Division selectors, would have been superior to the buttons. But that would have put this product at odds with the KeyLab controllers which also use octave buttons.

My biggest bugbear with the product is the micro USB socket. I go through cables like they're going out of fashion because they all become loose and fall out with repeated insert/remove over time. It should have had a full-size USB B socket, there is plenty of room on the circuit board.

[fungus]

A rotary selector, same style as the Arp Mode and Time Division selectors, would have been superior to the buttons.

Sure, but we haven't got that.

We can't upgrade the hardware but we can upgrade the firmware to make it work better. Maybe.

[puremusic]

Anyone try opening theirs up and modifying it yet?

[fungus]

Anyone try opening theirs up and modifying it yet?

I might open it up and paint over the LEDs with something to make them dimmer (I can't stop them flashing but they'll be much less annoying).

[puremusic]

Yes I was thinking of doing the same thing.

[fungus]

I wonder if there's space for an Arduino inside?

It could time the 'flash' signals and make the LED do something more sensible.

(...seems a bit extreme for something that should be a simple software fix)

[fungus]

I just popped the case off my Keystep to have a look at the LEDs. The bad news is that they're hidden behind an awful lot of screws and little ribbon connectors, quite hard to get at.

All the LEDs are being driven by a small 74HCT595 shift register chip, on the two pins circled below. They only used a 100 Ohm resistor for all the white LEDs so it's no wonder they're so blindingly bright. The two pins driving the octave buttons are circled in red n the image below.

(nb. I didn't trace it all out but the two 220 Ohm resistors will go to the red LEDs for the Rec/Tap buttons)

If you're awesome at soldering you could replace the resistors with a different value to make them much dimmer. Annoyingly, four of them are inside a resistor "4-pack" so that makes it impossible to replace those resistors selectively, you have to replace the whole thing (eg. you can't replace only the resistors for octave buttons because one of them is in the 4-pack, although ... maybe you could resolder the pack one step lower down and put an extra resistor in the gap left behind )

FWIW: The main CPU is an STM32F103 - a medium-power ARM chip. I bet I could get it to PWM those LEDs and dim them in software if I had access to the firmware (under NDA, naturally ), make each octave show as different brightness instead of different flash speed.