Playing with Launch Pads

A while back George brought along a device to the Hardware group that I’d not seen before. It was a panel covered in buttons and lights.

That’s buttons and lights. Awesome. He said it was called a “launchpad” and you used it in music production. I wanted one.

Fast forward to this week, and I’m thinking of getting into making music and stuff. And if you want to do that you really need a copy of the Ableton Live software suite. Which is expensive. However, it is possible to find a cut-down version of this software bundled in with music devices, including launchpads. Add to this the fact that Amazon had the Launchpad Mini Mk2 (including software) for a tempting 38 pounds at the moment and I figured it was time to make a strategic purchase.

It arrived today. The hardware is very nice. A matrix of 64 buttons which can display one of four colours (the latest model can do lots more colours but costs a lot more) . It also comes with a licence card that gets you a copy of the latest version of Ableton Live.

You just plug the device into your computer and it shows up as a MiDi device. You can use it in Ableton to trigger sound effects and music sequences. There’s even a low power mode that turns the led brightness down. This allows you to use it as a controller on an iPad via the iPad USB adaptor.

Plus (and this is really interesting) there’s a library on GitHub that lets you use the launchpad with Python programs. I’m thinking it might be a really neat way to manage robots if I ever get round to making the robot rugby game work. The buttons colours could show player status and also allow them to be started and stopped.

It’s a nice gadget and, if you can pick one up for the price I paid, well worth a look. The music stuff is fun, you could use it to trigger sound effects and whatnot as you record podcasts but it also makes a neat user input device too.