Foot pedals (V5.x.x)
OpenSongApp is designed to work with any USB or Bluetooth pedal that can send keyboard commands. The app will allow you to assign up to 6 different pedal buttons. To each pedal you can assign any of the actions available (currently 31) to a short or long press action. This effectively doubles the number of pedal buttons available to you!To assign actions to your footpedal, first make sure that your pedal is connected to your Android device (either by USB, or that it is paired using Bluetooth). Then open the 'Gestures and Menus' option menu and click on 'Assign foot pedal'.
On this page, you will see the settings available to each of the 6 assignable pedal buttons. For each, you will see the short press/tap action, the long press/hold action and a button that allows you to learn your foot pedal button.
Most users run a 2 pedal set up and the recommended settings are already set on first installation.
To assign a command to a foot pedal, select an appropriate action from the drop down lists for the short and/or long press options. Then click on the green 'Assign footpedal' button. The app will then wait to receive the footpedal code. Press the desired footpedal to map it to this command. Each pedal can only be mapped to one of the 6 available pedals - trying to assign it to a second different pedal will remove it from the first one.
For most users, with a two button footpedal, the most sensible option is to assign the left pedal to move to the previous song and the right pedal to move to the next song. There is also a switch to enable the same pedals to 'Toggle scroll before next/previous song' - if you are using a two button pedal, I recommend switching this on. This means that if you have a song that isn't fully scaled to the page, pressing the right pedal will first attempt to scroll down the page and once you have reached the end of the song, the app will move to the next song available (or the next song in your set). If you have more buttons available, you may wish to keep these separate.
Scroll actions (or prev/next buttons with scroll before moving switched on) also allows you to scroll through the song menu and set list windows.
Close the window using the red X to save your assigned foot pedal buttons.
Pedal options currently available are:
OFF
Previous
Next
Scroll up
Scroll down
Start/stop autoscroll
Start/stop pad
Start/stop metronome
Start/stop autoscroll + pad
Start/stop autoscroll + metronome
Start/stop pad + metronome
Start stop autoscroll + pad + metronome
Edit song
Choose autoscale
Transpose
Toggle show chords
Toggle show capo chords
Toggle show lyrics
Search songs
Choose random song
Show music score
Show highlighter notes
Show sticky notes
Open songs menu
Open settings menu
Show set
Add song to set
Refresh/reload current song
If you are considering buying a footpedal, you could go for AirTurn, PageFlip or even have a go at building your own. This isn't as hard as you might think and will save you quite a bit of money!
Be aware that due to Bluetooth footpedals acting as input devices (keyboards), Android will not show the onscreen keyboard whilst a Bluetooth pedal is connected. You can re-enable this though!
When you connect a Bluetooth pedal, Android will ask you to 'Configure physical keyboard' - look for this in your notifications.
After clicking on this, you will see the Physical keyboard options. There is a slider to 'Show virtual keyboard'. Switching this on, will allow the on screen keyboard to show when you need to enter text on the app. If you do not switch this on, you will first need to disconnect your Bluetooth footpedal before you can see the on screen keyboard in the app when connected to a Bluetooth pedal.
You can see the icon in my taskbar and Physical keyboard settings in the screenshot below:
