Palette Gear
p/palette-gear
Build your own tactile controller for your computer
Ben De Rienzo
Palette Gear β€” Build your own tactile controller for your computer
Featured
39
β€’
Replies
Kevin D.H Kim 🀘
Great to see fellow UW startup here! Yeah would love to see it working with Sketch. A lot of product designs / uiux designers like me are using Sketch these days
Calvin Chu
@dh9kim Thanks, Kevin! Our first requests for Sketch have actually been here on PH; usually people tend to ask about other photo or video editing software. As mentioned, we'll look into it if a lot of users ask us to. Thanks again!
Richard Burton
This looks fantastic. I was thinking the other day about how I could play my laptop like I play my drum kit: https://www.icloud.com/sharedalb... Have you ever considered making a footpedal?
Ali R. Tariq
I've always been impressed by this. Added to the Made in Waterloo collection :) http://www.producthunt.com/@alir...
Calvin Chu
@alirtariq Thanks for the support, Ali! If you ever visit the Foundry, feel free to stop by the Palette workspace!
Ali R. Tariq
@cchurun @alirtariq I'll take you up on that! I'm long overdue a visit to the Foundry.
Matt Gardner
Have tried palette. Beautiful hardware and a great offset to any software controls in apps. Just wish I could afford it ;)
Calvin Chu
@thatmattgardner Thanks, Matthew! Since you've played with Palette last, we've made a number of improvements. Feel free to drop by some time and we'd be happy to show you what's new!
Daryna Kulya
Saw Palette demo live at Product Hunt TO last month and it received a lot of "wows" and "ahs". @cchurun - What inspired creation of Palette? What's your own Palette setup like?
Calvin Chu
@darynakulya Thanks, the last Product Hunt TO event was a blast! As for the creation of Palette, I've always been pretty interested in human-computer interaction. A friend had a soundboard stolen at a party so for my fourth-year mechatronics project, I started working on something trying to replace it when I realized that these types of inputs are universal controls. After all, so many other things use buttons, dials, and sliders, so why couldn't there exist a controller that could be used for DJing AND more? I mostly edit my travelling photos, so I prefer the Expert Kit with a few extra dials, laid out in two profiles: one for sorting, and the second for developing. I've got a third profile in keyboard mode for Spotify so I can easily control my music while I'm editing. :)
Rahul
Yay! Go Calvin! Known Calvin for many years, turns out we went to the same high school and all - awesome guy. Keep a close eye on Calvin and Palette, great things coming to the world :) I saw Palette when it was just hacked up wood/breadboards - and now ... what a treat to be a witness to this story.
Calvin Chu
@iorahul Thanks a bunch, Rahul! We still have the first Palette prototype ever made still lying around the office somewhere. :P Let's catch up some time? Hope you're doing well!
Sam Legge
So many different things you can do with Palette! I'm excited to see applications of this in the music industry.
Calvin Chu
@d0b0 We were aiming for universality! Thanks, Samuel. :)
Charley Ma
This looks awesome and a huuuge lightroom time saver!
Calvin Chu
@charleyma That's what some of our Kickstarter backers have told us. Using your keyboard as opposed to Palette might not seem like it makes much of a difference, but when you're editing hundreds of photos after a shoot or event, that extra time really adds up. Thanks, Charley!
kurt braget
I love this idea. I want to feel like I'm a DJ when I'm programming.
Elliot Nash
Any support for Sketch coming?
Calvin Chu
@nasherasher It could be possible if there's a lot of demand for it. We're planning on releasing our hardware API and SDK some time in the future, so it's possible that another developer will create a Palette plug-in for Sketch before we do. In the meantime, you can still use Palette's keyboard profile to control some basic functions in Sketch (i.e., anything with a keyboard shortcut).
Alex Kontis
When I first saw the image and tag line, all I thought is that this would be perfect for making custom control surfaces for Pro Tools/Reason/Logic so I'm glad to see MIDI integration from the get go
Chris Scott
This. Looks. Incredible. Would have killed for something like this when I was still photographing weddings. So many hours in LR and PS after each wedding. Added to my Hunts for Pro Photographers collection.
Calvin Chu
@chrisgscott Thanks for the support, Chris! If you ever get back into photographing weddings, we're here for you!
Chris Scott
@cchurun thanks! You should approach some of the big post processing companies in the wedding photo industry about selling a bunch of these in bulk to their editors. ShootDotEdit, Lavalu, and the like. Could make their processes hella fast and be a great bulk sale for you guys. Let me know if you want an intro to anyone, were pretty tight with the team at ShootDotEdit.
Mario Gomez-Hall
This is going to change my life for design. So glad something like this was finally made! I've always dreamed of being able to turn knobs and drag sliders instead of fiddling with tiny buttons in Illustrator.
Calvin Chu
@nadomars Thanks, Mario! Not only that, but moving the knobs and sliders FEELS great too and the buttons make such a satisfying click sound when you push them. Glad we could make your dream come true!
Mario Gomez-Hall
@cchurun @nadomars you guys should integrate with BetterTouchTool so people can make any app compatible! Do you need beta testers? :)
Evan Varsamis
Great Project, Great Presentation!
Calvin Chu
@evanvar Thank you, Evan! And thank you for the feature on Gadget Flow!
Alex Kinsella
I've been lucky enough to try this out - it's everything you think it'd be...and more!
Daisy Qin
Was really impressed with the demo at the Product Hunt TO meetup. Looking forward to seeing where you guys take this!
Dan
This excites me
Calvin Chu
@danjfein Thanks, Dan! We're excited too... Being featured on PH doesn't happen every day!
Calvin Chu
Hey, Product Hunters! Thank you so much to @derienzo777 for hunting our product. Palette is a system of magnetically connected sliders, dials, and buttons that offer photographers and other creatives a faster, more intuitive, and precise editing experience. Users can fully customize the layout, function, and even colour of each module to their liking. We believe editing wasn't meant to be done with generic one-size-fits-all keyboard and mouse interfaces, nor with touch screens that force users to look down and away from their work. Instead, Palette's physical controls allow users to engage directly with their projects and improve their workflow. We had a successful Kickstarter campaign and just shipped out to about 1,000 customers last month. We're now accepting pre-orders for our second batch. If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to shoot! It's going to be a busy day but I'll do my best to hang around and get back to everyone. Thanks for the support! Calvin & The Palette Team
Pete
@cchurun Now that Palette Gear is available... I think it would be a great fit for Massdrop. It's a place where communities can buy the product in bulk, to receive a slight discount. Check it out, Cheers! https://www.massdrop.com/
David V. Kimball
In what ways can this be used? For some reason I'm just imagining assigning a slide to adjust levels of something (transparency, vibrancy, etc.), a button to be a shortcut to "canvas size" or "image size" or whatever. What am I missing?
Calvin Chu
@davidvkimball When I first began Palette as my fourth-year engineering project, I was aiming for a universal controller, so even though we've narrowed our focus a bit now, Palette has multiple uses. While you can use the slider to change levels of contrast/highlights/exposure/etc. when photo editing, you can also use it to scrub music in your audio editor. Buttons can undo or redo actions, including keystrokes when you're typing, or when you're playing music you can set them to play/pause or skip. We even did a bit of playing around with Palette in a video game called LIMBO, which you can watch here:
Hope that answered your question, David!
Seb
Such a great idea! Love the whole tactile aspect of it. Looking forward to trying it out.