Novation Launchpad Tear Down
For those of you that are curious like myself, here are some images of me disassembling the Novation Launchpad. I hope this inspires some of you to do some cool modifications to the controller, and make sure to send us some images of your modified launchpad. Click on the pictures to zoom in.
1. The launchpad
2. The launchpad flipped over. There are only 9 screws, taking this thing apart is a piece of cake.
3. The launchpad without the face plate.
4. The Launchpad viewed from the top without button pads.
5. The launchpad opened and viewed from the back.
6. Here is a close up of the mcu’s and the programing header on the board. The bigger chip is a STMicroelectronics 72f63bk2m1, here is a link to it’s data sheet. The smaller of the two chips is the NXP 74hc164d, and here is a link to it’s data sheet.
-tron
good article as usual!
I hate red, green and yellow led combination, what if solder rgb leds instead, only connect 2 of the leds, like red and blue, too get red, blue and purple. With green and blue, you would get Green, Blue and Cyan.
@Bob Borries
Agreed, I have been planning on replacing all the buttons with clear arcade buttons, and then replacing the regular leds with rgb.
@Bob, sounds like a good idea. Novation couldn’t do this as it’s far too costly to put down 80 RGB LEDs on a $199 controller. RG LEDs are far more available.
@miketron, if you are thinking of wiring your own buttons and LEDs into it, good luck — it wasn’t designed for such hackery! Look at the Arduinome as an alternative, unless you’re really keen on the Ableton integration.
what is that next to the usb port?
@RockMan Rock
That would be the programing header for when they are programing the IC in the Launchpad. I am currently messing around with this part of the Launchpad. I’m looking into rewriting some of the internal code to optimize the LP for usb 2.0