ABOUT

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1 - CobalTouch

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CobalTouch is an interface initially designed for my personal use and that I make available here.
It is intended for stage managers and lighting designers working with ETC's Cobalt software in nomadic mode and wishing to have a control surface to the faders and transport keys of the sequence.
It offers a pre-assignment of the X-Touch Mini buttons optimized for Cobalt and its visualization via a graphic interface.
It was made in Max and runs under Windows.

The application communicates in MIDI with the X-Touch and sends the information in OSC and MIDI to Cobalt.
The application is not bi-directional, it receives no information from Cobalt. The display of the fader levels via the LED segments of the X-Touch is therefore not synchronized.

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The interface allows you to:
 

• Control 2 pages of 8 faders (faders 1 to 8 and 11 to 18), with for each fader the level, the Flash button and the Select buttonz.

• Reset all the faders of a page with a button.

• Control the transport of the main sequence (Seq+, Seq-, Go, Go back, Pause).   

• Manage the Grand Master level.

Once the application is opened, it runs in the background.

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2 - X-Touch Mini

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The X-Touch Mini is a MIDI control surface designed by Behringer. It consists of 8 rotary knobs with push and LED ring, 16 push buttons and a linear knob.
These controls are replicated in two layers A and B (except the linear potentiometer), offering access to up to 49 different MIDI parameters all configurable via X-Touch Editor, the dedicated editor.

 

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3 - Why this controler ?

 

- To replace the Korg NanoKontrol (too fragile and inaccurate, although it helped a lot of people!)
- Because I never found a cheap control surface with motorized linear potentiometers quiet enough to be used during a piece of theater in the middle of the audience.

My choice was the X-Touch mainly for the following reasons:
 

• Quite compact (it's a bit like the NanoKontrol).

• Endless rotary potentiometers with LED segments allowing to know their setting in each layer A and B.

• Fully customizable via PC editor.

Disadvantages :
 

• A little too thick to be easily transportable.

• Rotating buttons unnecessarily high.

• Push of the rotary buttons a bit stiff.

• Push buttons a bit stiff and not very precise.

• Big disappointment concerning the possibility to set the LED segments for the feedback. There are certainly some possibilities but they are very limited (or I didn't understand everything, especially since the documentation is very short).

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IMPLEMENTATION

 

1 - Setting up the X-Touch Mini

 

First of all, the controller must be configured internally using the X-Touch Editor, the dedicated editor provided by Behringer:

 

You will need the two layer configuration files A and B specific to the use with CobalTouch:

"X-Touch_Mini_Cobalt_A" and "X-Touch_Mini_Cobalt_B" (Google Drive link) :

 

 

 

Once these files are downloaded, connect the X-Touch Mini to your computer via USB and

- Launch X-Touch Editor (it does not install).
- Go to the Global tab /"Presets on computer"/Load at the top left and select the configuration file

"X-Touch_Mini_Cobalt_A.bin" previously downloaded.
- Click on the "Dump A" button on the right of the editor to transfer the configuration to the controller.
- Repeat the operation to load layer B (Load --> "X-Touch_Mini_Cobalt_B.bin"--> "Dump B").