Hotone Ampero Control

These might be irrelevant to you, but to me they might be dealbreakers. I will only comment on negative aspects. The positives can be found on the 5-star comments.

1) Your expression pedal _might_ not work properly. I have a Thread-Light from Fender and can't get it callibrated. Multiple callibration attempts: sometimes it doesn't work, calibrate again, sometimes it only works on around 25% of the range of the pedal. The expression pedal works fine on other devices/setups.

2) The app is mediocre - but it does its job.
- Slow.
- Ugly. The icons are low-resolution images that look blurry. You can't tell what is a text input field or a button or a dropdown menu. Animations are sluggish and irrelevant.
- Overall, it feels unfinished. CH instead of "Channel", Data1 instead of "Controller", Data2 instead of "Value", etc.
- Complicated and unclear. You can't copy a bank for example, you have to manage templates and groups... stuff...
- I could only download it from their site. It is not opensource. I'm very privacy oriented so I installed it on an old phone.

3) Incomplete message type options. Note On/Off, PC and CC. Nothing else.

4) No other way of configuring the device besides the mobile app. App or nothing: by default it comes completely empty (some sane defaults would've been nice like in the FaderFox EC4)

5) The buttons a little loud (they are fine unless your microphone is very sensitive)

At first I thought there was some latency. Now I discovered that in "single" and "toggle" modes, the footswitches send their CC message when you release your foot - "momentary" mode works as expected. Read the manual.

So, the manual... there are two user manuals. The first and more available consists of 2 pages of irrelevant/incomplete information (blue with brown font) and that is what you get in the box. The real manual is accessible through the app's help section (maybe somewhere else as well but not immediate).

There has been NO firmware updates ever. I don't know what to make of that. Hotone has plenty of work to do.

If I had managed to get the expression pedal working, I might have kept it. The experience has been... underwhelming. In my case, I will spend the buck on a fancier controller.

The Ampero Control is a really small and inexpensive MIDI-controller with excellent build quality and an extremely wide range of capabilities. I'm using it to switch presets and effects in BIAS FX 2 and it works like a dream! Here are the pros and cons:

+ Relatively inexpensive
+ Fairly easy setup, works with basically anything with MIDI
+ Small and light = portable
+ Can send both PC and CC messages via MIDI, to any channel
+ Supports "single", "toggle", "momentary" and "hold" button methods
+ Powered by either USB or regular power
+ Possibility to use additional expression pedals
+ Good companion app that has intuitive and helpful features. Connects very well to the unit.
+ Excellent build quality. Buttons feel solid and they don't make too much noise when used.
+ Up to 100 switchable banks. I use these so that 1 bank = 1 song (because in each song, you probably need max 2-3 different sounds).

Cons:
- Small display only displays numbers, so it's possible to get lost if you have many presets and banks


For me, four buttons is the perfect number because I don't think anyone needs more when playing a singe song. And between songs, you can switch the bank to get another four different functions. So overall, I'm really happy that I got this and it's a permanent addition to my pedal board!

Ich habe den Controller gekauft um mein Line6 Helix fernsteuern zu können, ich schalte mit den 4 Knöpfen zwischen verschiedenen Snapshots hin- und her während das eigentliche Helix nicht in Reichweite ist.

Die Progammierung via Smartphone App ist intuitiv und innerhalb weniger Sekunden erledigt. Bei vielen Konkurrenzprodukten ist die Programmierung nur am Gerät selbst mittels der eingebauten Fußschalter und einem kleinen Display möglich - ein großer Pluspunkt für die Bedienerfreundichkeit.
Hinweis: Die App für Android scheint es nicht im App-Store zu geben, ich musste sie von der Hotone Supportseite als .apk herunterladen und manuell installieren.

Der Controller selbst bietet noch viel mehr Möglichkeiten als ich eigentlich nutze, man kann noch zusätzliche Expression-Pedale oder Fußtaster anschließen. So könnte man z.B. relativ günstig die Anzahl der Fußtaster von 4 auf 8 erhöhen und so noch flexibler sein.

Jedem potentiellen Käufer lege ich es Nahe die Anleitung dennoch kurz zu studieren, gerade was die Schaltermodi anbelangt. Denn der "Standardmodus" der beim Druck auf einen Fußtaster ein (oder auf Wunsch auch mehrere) MIDI Befehle abschickt tut dies beim loslassen, nicht beim drücken. Es gibt aber auch einen Modus der bereits beim drücken des Schalters die Befehle absendet was sicherlich durchaus sinnvoller ist.

DIe Verarbeitung ist absolut top, das Gehäuse ist aus dickem Metallblech, robust beschichtet. Die Taster machen ebenfalls einen robusten Eindruck, das Gerät wird selbst dem harten Bühnenalltag stand halten.

Fazit: Absolut lohnenswerter Kauf, sehr flexibel und wohl für die meisten MIDI-Anwendungen sehr gut geeignet.

Bought this simply as an effects on/off midi switch for use with a behringer xr12. I only use one of the foot buttons, which can be an issue if you have big feet and your not looking down at the time. Easy to program with the app, straight forward connections and an illuminated screen so you know what your at. It's a compact unit, and it's black so it's perfect for me as a solo performer, I didn't want a huge midi pedal in front of me. Big bonus is that in my case I can power it directly from the usb output of the XR12 , very handy!
Overall it's solidly built, reliable so far, easy to set up, and compact.
Very happy with it.

A lot of flexibility with programming functions. It has 100 banks of 4 commands (one per footswitch), each of which can be defined absolutely freely and can each contain a sequence of messages (by comparison, an M-VAVE Chocolate allows you to either have banks of Program Change commands going from 0 to 127 in order, or configure a measly 4 custom messages). The inclusion of a MIDI Thru socket is also really handy to avoid having to buy/include a MIDI merge box in your setup.

My only real problem with this one was the USB midi. It seems the USB port is kind of weak since I didn't get it to work with a 6 meter USB cable, but it worked with a shorter 2 meter-ish cable. I also didn't manage to get it work with a USB-A to USB-B adapter in the middle, I assume it also introduced extra resistance?

A minor gripe is that there is no power switch on it, you turn it off by unplugging it. Slightly annoying.

I haven't tried the Bluetooth MIDI or the expression pedal jack so I cannot comment on that front.

But I am a keytar player and I just have them hooked together with a MIDI-Bluetooth adapter (so, technically using the MIDI port instead), and it gives me a lot of freedom changing patches or even triggering notes additional to what I'm doing with my hands.

Rien a dire par rapport qualité/prix
Facile a programmer, switch très réactif. prends pas de place sur un pedalboard. Qualité Top.

L'application est facile, la détection est très rapide et clair
Je pilote mon Headrush MX5 et mon looper Aeros,
Différent mode pour envoyer les commandes Single, momentary, hold et toggle.
Il y a des presets déjà conçu pour d'autres appareil

Les moins
Il faut impérativement être connecter a l'appareil pour pouvoir avoir accès a l'application. Donc impossible de programmer a l'avance ou ailleurs que chez soit

Vu sa petite largeur, il a tendance a balancer vers l'arrière lors d'une pression au pied. Sur pedalboard je conseille de l'entourer d'un colson, pour qu'il soit plus stable , un seul colson suffit.