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!

I bought this to control a Boss RC-500 looper via MIDI. I have been using a 6 buttons Blackstar Live logic foot controller, which is a good foot switch board overall too, but I found some little frustrating things and nags with the Blackstar since I have it for over a year, + I only needed 4 foot switches and not 6 anymore so, the Ampero Hotone seemed the appropriate next step for my set up.

First impression is :so far so good. I downloaded the App on the App store, skipped the sign in, paired the unit with Bluetooth on my iPad within seconds, and went straight into programming the 4 foot switches. Pretty easy I have to say. For me it took a bit of a brain power to really understand what the 4 modes (single, Momentary, toggle and Hold) actually do when trying to control an external MIDI device, not sure I did the correct set up but for my needs, after 2 or 3 trials, it worked 100%.
You MUST save whatever you just programmed for it to be sent/flashed to the Ampero control and actually see/hear/feel the result. The test button on the App is useful but it's not giving you the full picture of the command you just programmed.

I then installed it on my pedal board (see below my "negative" about this) and I gigged last Friday (March 28th) with this new unit and it behaved like a charmed. The buttons are very responsive and smooth (a little "clicky" but live it doesn't matter at all), it didn't fail, I didn't have MIDI error message like I had with the the Blackstar, so, all in all, it's a good upgrade for me and my needs.
I have a feeling that if I explore a bit more I can get more actions assigned to each button, which I'll discover later I believe but so far, it has been robust and easy enough to program and handle.
The black & sand colour is a very tasty cosmetic touch that I like a lot.

My only cons I have is that, if you put it on a pedal board with velcro, the 6 little rubber feet can't be removed and will get in the way of the adhesive velcro and might leave small gaps between the Hotone and the board, where the velcro is not 100% gripping to the other velcro part. It holds relatively fine, it works overall but the Hotone feels a little "loose" on the board, so I used a long cable tie to secure it on the pedalboard frame. I might have to slice the rubber feet later when my 30 days return window has elapsed ;)
To summarise, for me it's a good MIDI foot switch, reliable, easy enough to program, responsive and good looking.

Update after 2 weeks:
Well it still works well but the fact that pressing buttons 1 & 2 at the same times changes bank, it could put you in a very difficult situation live if your foot slip a bit. It happened few times now that because of this, I can't control the RC500 anymore, and I don't even realise it. It's a little annoying.
I programmed bank 0, 1 and 99 to be exact same so if my foot slips, I can still work.
Also the commands are triggered when the button is released, not pressed, so there could be a slight delay in operation, and it's annoying too because it could throw your timing off.... I'm having second thoughts about the usability live.

Update after few weeks:
The button operation on RELEASE is not good. I have missed countless starts in time because of this “feature”. I would definitely return this if i could. This is not usable in the way I want it.

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.