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Support for nano. slider

 

Using your nano, cleaning and tips

Keebwerk Nanos come in a variety of colours and materials. 

We have optimised and adjusted production along the way to eliminate some issues we had noticed but all parts are compatible to all Nano’s. If you have a Nano from the first batch you can still purchase an extra Part in the new colours and it is guaranteed to fit!

 

Nano Bento: Brass Bases 

  • Brass bases purchased with the limited edition Nano. Bento are in a Raw state and to give the gorgeous matte finish they are sandblasted. Brass, in its raw form is susceptible to corrosion, visible as dark spots. This corrosion is only a thin surface layer and does not destroy the product over time.
  • If you have experienced this corrosion it is very easy to remove it. Use some hot water and house hold citric acid, often purchaseable in small packets as a powder form. Dissolve the Citric acid in the hot water, tip a paper toal in the liquid and rub over the corrosion. You will see the discolouration disappear.
  • PLEASE BE AWARE THAT SOME PRODUCTS CAN HAVE ADDITIVES THAT MIGHT CAUSE DAMAGE TO THE BRASS MATERIAL – try out in a spot that is not visible – for example on the inside. Remove the Brass Base from your Nano before cleaning as to not risk water damage to your PCB.

 

Slider Knobs:

  • Your Nano comes with a Aluminium Knob that is friction fitted on the Potentiometer. If you want to remove the Knob you can carefully pull it off the potentiometer Stem.
  • Spare knobs can be purchased in our store

 

Nano PCB’s:

We have iterated the PCBs over the production batches. All PCBs are identical in functionality but can vary in their appearance

  • There are black and white PCBs. All Nanos starting in the year 2020 have white PCBs.
  • Nano’s purchased after May 2021 have a PCB that has a date marking on them with the year 2019. Truth be told this was a manufacturing mistake, the PCBs are however brand new and we decided to not scrap the PCBs due to visual mistake that cannot be seen in operation.

 

NEWEST GUIDE – Native Windows / Linux Volume Control App

A better solution.

So, after years of feedback we have learned that the current MIDI package that is offered with the nano. is not the ideal solution for people who do not understand MIDI or what it can be used for.  This new way was created by the great guy jesusvallejo on GitHub, it is a simple installable app that will drop into your tray of the windows menu. You will be able to control Discord, Windows Volume, Spotify and more using this app. I will take you through the guide below on how to get this to work.

The installation step.

So I will make a step by step instruction manual of how to install the app as for some GitHub can be confusing (including myself)

Please visit the link here https://github.com/jesusvallejo/Midi2Vol

Here you will see the GitHub page with a manual written, but I will take you through the step by step below.

  • Open the link

 

  • Scroll down the page to the following text, and click on the blue link

  • Continue to download the binary file here, you can click on Setup.exe

  • Wait for the download to finish and proceed to open the installer, please click continue and select a path where you want to install the app. The installer is in spanish, the normal blue highlighted button is to continue.

  • After the installer is complete you will be able to launch the app from the taskbar or from wherever you installed the app. Please be aware this app is continuously running in your taskbar and you can get to it at any time to change the settings on the fly. The window looks like as below, please be aware that you will want to click on Default and then ADD, this will make sure that Windows registers Windows Volume as the variable that will be changed using the MIDI Slider on the nano. This is all you have to do for now from the windows/software part of the app. The app is ready to go. The next part of the instructions will introduce you to how the firmware should be treated.

 

The firmware step.

The QMK file on the nano has to be slightly modified to be able to work with the app, long story short, the firmware is changed to enable the app to read the nano. and for it to be able to change the volume function of the midi using the keys on the nano. so you can swap from Windows Volume to Spotify Volume using keys on the fly. 

The easiest way to keep this simple is to use the files that Jesusvallejo has uploaded as sample files to the Github and to change the keymap instead of changing the core firmware files that we provide. 

The files that are provided have to be downloaded here, you can also feel free to use the Github link here as a sample keymap.c file.

You will be able to find the keymap.c file in the following sub folders of the QMK Firmware you have downloaded: Keyboards/nanoslider/keymaps/default/keymap.c

A finished hex file that SHOULD work is linked here: https://github.com/jesusvallejo/nanokeymaps/

 

I WILL FIRST DISCUSS THE FUNCTION OF THE KEYMAP SO YOU CAN UNDERSTAND HOW THE FIRMWARE WORKS BEFORE MAKING CHANGES

You will want to modify all the layers of the keys to fit your needs, the keymap.c file features the keymap of the firmware. This can be opened any standard text format app.

Please be aware the part of the old manual DOES NOT APPLY here to know which key works as what.

The code is in the following order,

MO(_TOOGLE),

KC_MPLY, KC_MNXT,  KC_COPY,

KC_MUTE,  KC_MPRV, KC_PASTE, KC_ENTER

This layout above corresponds to the visual layout of the nano. So MO TOGGLE is on the top left key, and the ENTER key is on the 2U key on the right.

the current keymap of the hex above looks as below

Why are there multiple stacked keymaps in one file? QMK is featured different firmware layers, meaning your nano can function on different layers and per layer the keys have different functions. The top button will toggle the layer in the firmware MO(_TOGGLE), meaning if you click the top left 1U button once, it will move to (2)LIGHTS from(1)MEDIA, when clicked again it will move from (2)LIGHTS to (3)VOLUME layers and so on. Keep this in mind to organise your keymaps.

If all above is not understood, I can rephrase it so: the keymap.c file tells the nano what key switch does what, at what location. So you need to tell it that the 2U key will write ENTER to the computer. We need to change the keymap per key, by writing in what command you want where.

You will need this to know what commands are read by firmware: 

Here is the full list https://beta.docs.qmk.fm/features/keycodes_basic

A further list can be found here: https://beta.docs.qmk.fm/features/feature_advanced_keycodes

TRYING TO KEYMAP YOURSELF!

I will go through one example of how to change one layer to whatever you want. You can follow this guide below to make changes to your own file.

I have my keymap in the keymap.c file as below: 

 

I would like to change that KC_ENTER no longer works as a enter button but works as a RGB Toggle button, I found the keycode to be RGB_TOG using the links here https://beta.docs.qmk.fm/features/feature_advanced_keycodes and https://beta.docs.qmk.fm/features/keycodes_basic

I will now rewrite that one key to be written as:


now my 2U Key will function as a RGB Toggle key. This is how simple it is.

After you make all your modifications, PLEASE MAKE SURE that all commas, brackets are left as before, please save the file under the same name. keymap.c

This file should now be located in the following sub folders of the QMK Firmware you have downloaded: Keyboards/nanoslider/keymaps/default/keymap.c

You do not need to modify anything else of the folders that have been provided to you.

The flashing step.

The next step is to somehow get the file onto the nano.; for this you will need to make a .hex file (or take one from the link above) and this will require some patience and time as it will require some programming to get this going. I will be writing a guide for Windows soon. If you want to know how to create a hex. you can follow the links below:

https://beta.docs.qmk.fm/tutorial/newbs_building_firmware\

https://golem.hu/guide/firmware-update/

All is done! – The nano. should now work.

 

 

OLD GUIDE – Running using other 3rd party apps. (MIDI Control on anything else)

Basic prebuilt .hex files

Here are some basic example setups of our nano. slider with various applications, please be aware, these may be OS specific and might only work with the specified OS. Our .hex files are available for download here, we will be pushing some basic keymaps to the official QMK rep.

  • Adobe Photoshop MAC
  • Media Control MAC
  • Windows Media Control MAC

What we have working –

Foobar Control on Windows

Media Control on Windows

MIDI2LIGHTROOM on MAC

ControllerMate Control on MAC

Windows Volume on Windows

THE FILES YOU NEED

The basic .hex folder setup is available at this link below:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/10HAdNFTqzAwgdo-ZhQ_KdkVEi0Ovfwjz?usp=share_link

The basic standard .hex file is available at this link below:

 

KNOWN ISSUES

MAC Lag – for some reason when the nano. slider is connected and no output is being read by the mac, the nano. slider lags and seems sluggish, the solution to this is to open a MIDI application which reads the output of the nano. slider

WINDOWS 10 Issue – Windows 10 has been realising updates that have been messing with the MIDI files. FIXED!

HOW TO – MANUAL

How to flash your nano. device.

Our nano. devices use standard QMK firmware modified by us to fit the extra pinout of the ATMEGA32 processor which is occupied by the potentiometer. This guide is for any beginner who would like to learn about QMK and how to flash their keebwerk device.

First of all, you will require a few things to make this work.

  1. The folder (if planning to makefile (.hex) on your own) / .hex file
  2. QMK Toolbox (Mac) – Command Tool on Windows – QMK Toolbox (Windows)
  3. USB Cable
  4. nano. slider device (believe it or not.)

Setting up the files as you need.

To get the nano. to type keys/commands as you want to you will have to modify the keymap of the QMK firmware. This process is fairly simple, even without any past programming experience. PLEASE DO NOT use an online standard QMK configurator as the QMK folder that the nano. uses is built differently to support the potentiometer.

a) You will need to access the QMK folder that you have downloaded using Finder or Explorer, and you will navigate to:

/qmk-nanoslider-1.X/keyboards/nanoslider/keymaps/default/keymap.c

please open the keymap.c file using a text/code editor.

b) You will find a bunch of code and some of it might look familiar to you as you will see words like KEYMAP and KC_4.

c) Now, for people who are familiar with QMK, you will immediately recognize some parts of the code. This is where the code lies which tells the device what each keypress should mean to the computer. Here you can change where you want media buttons, number buttons or letters on your nano. device.

The code is in the following order,

KEYMAP(
    KC_3, KC_4, KC_5, KC_6, 
    KC_2, TG(1), KC_1, KC_0),

Please be aware that these numbers are in random order and do not respond to the visual layout of the nano. slider.

The locations currently set as:

TG (1)

KC_1, KC_2, KC_3 2U KEY BEING KC_0

KC_4, KC_5, KC_6

You can now change any of the keys to whatever you require.

Here is the full list https://beta.docs.qmk.fm/features/keycodes_basic

A further list can be found here: https://beta.docs.qmk.fm/features/feature_advanced_keycodes

PLEASE do not use ALIAS codes of the QMK keys, but the full keycodes.

You can now replace the parts of codes in the file to match what you require, please make sure the commas and the formatting is still correct while copy-pasting code.C

 

Creating the .hex file out of the folder

The first step is to prepare your .hex file by using command console/ terminal/ whatever console editor you have on your system. For this to work you will require a few dependencies and libraries. We recommend you visit: https://docs.qmk.fm/#/ and install what you require to make QMK work on your computer.

After everything is installed, you will have to make your .hex file from the folders that you have downloaded from our site (and modified yourself)

To do this you will need to navigate in your terminal/console to the qmk folder (in our case it has landed in Downloads)

cd /Downloads/qmk-nanoslider (qmk-nanoslider is the folder name, please make sure it matches the folder name of the QMK folder that you downloaded)

And after, you will want to create the .hex file by typing:

make all

The console will then show you the process of what it is doing to make the .hex file, you should see a success / OK! message at the end of it. Please make sure there are no errors in the process of creating the .hex.

Congratulations now you have made your own .hex file from a few random folders and files.

Flashing the nano. slider

To flash the nano. slider, we recommend you use QMK Toolbox to program the nano. slider as it is the easiest.

The window of QMK Toolbox will look like this:

Please connect the nano. slider and press the reset button on the bottom of the nano. slider, inside the nano. slider under the base. Select the .hex file you have created inside the folder of the qmk firmware that you have downloaded. Please press the flash button on the app once the log says the keyboard is connected. The nano. slider now works and should be good to go!

Using the MIDI!

POWERMIXER (Windows)

Power Mixer was one of the first use cases we had for the nano. slider, please find the settings below that you can use to get Power Mixer to work. There is a small delay in the MIDI signal, but we are trying to bug-fix that.

Power Mixer can be found here: https://www.actualsolution.com/power-mixer/features/

SETTINGS

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