Velo
Experiment that reads key velocity and aftertouch from the FM-1's rubber-dome keys with no hardware changes, by sampling two key rows with the chip's ADC; a small FM voice and USB MIDI output show the result.
Brick risk. Flashing this carries a known, documented risk of damaging the device.
- Distribution
- Build from source yourself
- Source
- github.com https://github.com/charlesvestal/fm1-velocity
- velocity
- midi
- usb-midi
- research
Description
The FM-1 keys give only on or off, but a carbon pill's resistance falls with force. Velo samples that between key-scan ticks and takes velocity from the time between a touch and a press threshold. Twenty of the 27 keys are read; the top seven play at a fixed velocity. The screen shows each press as a curve, and a host script logs presses to CSV. The author parked it on 2026-10-14 with per-key calibration not yet right.
Install notes
Build build/velo.fwsc with ./build.sh and flash it with tools/fm1_install.py. Chords, aftertouch in drive mode and release velocity are untested or not sent.
Version history
| Version | Date | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| main @ 8f62ce0 | 2026-10-14 | No tagged releases; this is the latest commit. |