Tuna DJ Gear has gone live with their Kickstarter project to create tangible knobs for multi-touch music applications.
Their Tuna Knobs are control knobs that stick to any touchscreen and let you control DJ and music making apps like you would with dedicated music hardware
The Kickstarter project had a €12,500 funding goal, which the project reached nearly instantaneously. The Kickstarter funding project, though, runs for about a month. Tuna Knobs are available to backers, starting at €11 for one knob.
See the project site for details.
Who would want physical rotary knobs on a touch screen? That goes against the whole concept of touch UI. With touch UI you could turn ten knobs at a time if you want to.
whit this you can make custom interfaces. move shit around
100$ gets you 16 knobs, and pads, and midi out, and presets…. and more.
that includes is a few different controllers on market now, not just one.
Missing the point.. I don’t want stick on knobs on my touch screen. It’s a very very very very stupid idea. It would be better if the knobs could be attached to a home made synth or control panel rather than stuck on a screen. I don’t want to be pulling off knobs every time I want to use my iPad for other apps. I do a lot with my ipad. Bad idea.
you missed my point, 100 dollars gets u five knobs.
100 dollars on a midi controller gets you 8 knobs, 8 sliders, some mutes and solos,
or 8 knobs, 8 pads, yadda yadda yadda – on its own ‘surface’.
theres nothing stuck to your screen. i wouldn’t want that either.
The animated gif shows a hand twiddling a knob over a tablet screen. I note that the knob in question is just a plastic knob cover with no actual functionality. It’s purely to illustrate the concept.
cool idea but not almost $20 per knob worth of cool. 🙁
Yeah knobs can get expensive… what would be great would be if you could just get one, and assign it to control different parameters with a switch or button or something…
But wait, then you’d have a knob at a position that didn’t match the parameter it controlled, so you’d need some way of displaying the parameter value, on a screen, and some kind of ‘endless’ knob that didn’t have a defined position…
Then again, it’s kind of a chore reaching for one thing and looking at another, it would be great if you could just touch the value on the screen and make it change…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zLx_JtcQVI
yeah, maybe 5$ a knob tops…
couldn’t you do that with a suction cup and a magnet?
We can all agree this is an “out-o’-the-box” concept.
Makes me think of the classic sit-com line, “It’s so crazy, it just might work.”.
As someone who kind of hates using a touch screen to turn a virtual knob, I see both the appeal and the downside of it. Ultimately, touch screens are one the most over-rated input devices– for some tasks.
Eveyone gearing up for real time control of soft synths.
Why not buy hardware to start with.
Have you noticed that it doesn’t work on the above pic
I liked that, too. Not the best example, eh?
Look closer, it is working just fine.
Can’t see it
I can see that the color is indeed moving with the knob… but I have two concerns:
1) We can’t get a full sweep?
2) that could have easily been manipulated and turned into a GIF. Doesn’t prove anything in it’s current form. I’d like to see some consistent video examples of these things working more than once and more than 75% of the time.
3) I’d have to agree with those who’ve pointed out that you can get much more control for the same price by just buying a controller. If I want hands on control, I’ll use my hardware controller.
It’s crazy but I like the concept personally.
There are plenty of reason not to use such a thing but in my experience filter knobs on touch screen feels just wrong.
It looks so simple that if the feeling is right and it lasts then it might become a brilliant thing.
A controller app with several patch you can swipe through with knobs all placed in the same spot gives you great control potential.
But if you’re playing and you knock out a couple and they fall out of reach, it might become more a distraction than anything else.
It does seem to be a case of a solution that is looking for a problem.
Shhhh!!!!!….let them realize by themselves that playing with knobs in a real metal faceplate is one of the coolest thing on earth…some how they will find their way to the right path of playing with knobs 😉
i am sure, the idea will work for the producers. they will sell enough knobs. enough people will want to try out and buy some. not use. buy.
Is it just me, are is the “tuna” knob in the gif not really moving the knob in touchOSC?
Besides the obvious irony of sticking knobs to the surface of a touch screen, there are a few very real concerns that make this product seem destined for the graveyard:
1) cost is way too high
2) suction cups often don’t stay stuck (unless you lick them …and then stick that on your screen), and especially if the temperature is too cold or too hot. If you get excited while tweaking a knob, that could be enough to release the knob! Oh joy!
3) Not one single demo video of them actually being used. Why not? So far, they’ve shown that they have this ‘idea’ but haven’t shown that it actually works very well, in real world use. I see the lack of demos as a huge red flag.
Anyway, I think users would quickly realize that a cheap USB controller is more durable, more stable (knobs won’t pop off from aggressive tweaking), and for the same amount of money would give you more control surfaces to use.
Those are all good points, but you mussed the main point – people want to buy this!
Tuna figured that out, and that’s why they are going to make money on this, and you and I aren’t!
Knobs that turn what is supposed to be an instantly redefineable work surface into a static work surface. And yes you can move them around, about as easily as changing custom parts on a bicycle, meaning not easily or quickly at all. I still say this idea is completely wrong and the totally opposite way that it should be done. The touch screen manufacturers should be working on a way to put magneto-dynamic induction into the touch surface in order to magnetically stimulate the nerve endings in the fingers and create a sense of touching different shapes and textures that are not there physically at all. Thus, the “shape/texture/feel” of the work surface could change as instantly and as accurately as the “shape/picture/sight” of the work surface. Little overpriced knobs with suction cups that leave ring marks and dried saliva all over your pad are not the way to go.
The project is fully funded, so your ranting is misguided.
It’s clear that there are people that want to try out tangible control setups, that can be easily be customized by the end user. This system offers a fairly cheap way for people to try this out.
The suggestion that tablet makers should replace touch screens with haptic feedback screens sounds kind of cool. But does it really make sense to replace cheap multitouch screens with expensive haptic feedback ones, just so that we can pretend we’re twisting fake knobs? That’s sort of absurd!
It’s time for app designers to get more creative with their UI designs. Check out the controls in Audulus, for example. They automatically get bigger when you’re using them, so it’s easy to be precise.
I love people who tell others that they can’t rant. If you don’t like the rant, skip it, but don’t tell others they can’t talk however they want. That’s treading on Fascism.
I was really excited about this project originally, as I had been working on something similar, but now with the price and really thinking about control surfaces, I see that it’s not really that great. I personally would rather build out my own control surface with Livid Products. That way I have a separate surface to play with (since I often switch between apps during a set anyway), and I can use whatever nice knobs I want. It’s disappointing to me that they chose such tall, wonky knobs.
omg I fell out my with laughter. seeing the demo, it looks like he’s putting out a cigarette. Pardon, it’s just so different it tickles me, definitely not my cup of tea. But hey, neither was Apple Stock 20 years ago and look how that went.
pointless with iMS20 if you want to use the OTHER parts of the synth
for the cost of all the knobs you would need
you might as well buy a Legacy usb ms20 controller
I got one of the 1Euro ones, definitely worth a twiddle or two at that price, if I’d missed them I wouldn’t have paid 10Euro or whatever it is they’re charging.
+1 for getting a proper controller surface, but I like the idea of being able to have this in my pocket and use it occasionally when the need is there.
The idea of having an iPad full of these things is bit bizarre and not something I’m interested in.
Someone mentioned somewhere that care should be taken to keep it and your screen clean, don’t want to be rubbing a bit of grit into your screen huh!
This isn’t aimed at high brow consumers and synth aficionados such as ourselves. I could see this on a rack at Big Lots in a year.