This is so cool and so clever I'm in awe, really. I'm grinning from ear to ear looking at this and jealous I didn't think of it. But the problem it solves is not quite one that anyone has. What does it offer over a built-in knob with a jack that overrides it beside compactness? A knob that's not designed for feel that you can misplace?
There's a miniature case study in thinking about innovation here. This is what the germ of a really neat idea looks like but you have to keep going and that's hard.
As he mentions in the video, the whole motivation is compactness. When your panel looks like https://learningmodular.com/the-eurorack-expansion-project/ , every mm^2 matters.
I'd be tempted to eliminate the patch cord altogether by using one of those pushbutton pots. Normally it would act like a traditional pot, but if you push it, it would go into a mode where you could choose from a variety of nearby inputs wirelessly.
The LEDs next to the pot would need to be an OLED display that indicates the selected input. Some form of extremely lightweight mesh network for control connections would need to exist, something with very low bandwidth and short range but also low latency. After 5 or 10 years' worth of tinkering, it might actually synthesize some sounds.
Right - it solves the compactness problem but introduces new ones. That said, from what I've seen of other people's modular setups, keeping them from growing without bound does not seem to be the highest priority in that world.
I'd also have to wonder how well a jack would hold up under regular use as a bushing. It's very common for engineers with little exposure to the connector industry (not my background either, but I read the data sheets and app notes) to underestimate how highly engineered and optimized for their use case even decades-old connector types are.
It would be nice to have something like the NKK display pushbuttons in the knob for a rotary encoder/pushbutton.
>After 5 or 10 years' worth of tinkering, it might actually synthesize some sounds.
Yeah.