RP-FC

RP2040 Foot Controller. A Boss GA-FC foot controller replacement for Boss Katana Gen3 amps.

About

This project acts as a GA-FC-compatible footswitch for Boss Katana Gen3 amps. A RP2040 microcontroller, e.g. a Raspberry Pi Pico, implements the serial communication with the amp. A simple circuit with a couple of optocouplers is required around the RP2040 (source for that here). This new foot controller connects to the amp with a single TRS cable, and gets powered with that same cable.

This has only been tested with Katana 100 Gen3. I know there are differences in the GA-FC communication between Gen 3 and the previous versions of the amps, so I don't know if this works with those or not.

Try at your own risk.

Hardware

See the required parts in the schematic drawing.

Build firmware

This project is implemented with embedded Rust, mainly around the rp-hal crate. To build the project, a Rust toolchain is needed.

1. Install prerequisite packages

   • flip-link
   • probe-rs

2. Setup the ARM toolchain with rustup

    rustup target add thumbv6m-none-eabi
   

3. Build: cargo build

4. Flash and tail logs with probe-rs: cargo run

   • See probe-rs docs for more information about configuration and connections