I started experimenting with my old Zoom 8050 foot controller that I still had laying around.
For those not around in the early nineties, the 9050 is the companion foot controller of the classic Zoom 9030 rack effect processor, but quite capable of working stand alone, having regular DIN MIDI cable connectors.
The pedal layout is classic enough. It has BANK UP and BANK down footswitches, one BYPASS switch (that on the original effect processor bypasses alleffects, but since in the end it only outputs a CC message can be used for anything), one GROUP switch which I’ll explain later, and 5 numbered switches.
Selecting a patch is done this way: The BANK switches set the “tens” digit on the display. Then by clicking one of the numbered footswitches you add the “unit” and output the corresponding PC message. The GROUP switch works as a “shift” key. When red numbered footswich output 1 to 5. When green they output 6 to 10. Clicking the GROUP switch alternates from red to green. The PC message is output only when clicking the numbered footswitches so you can prepare in advance the next patch by setting banks and group without interrupting the sound.
What makes this pedalboard most interesting is that it had an “extended mode” switch that allows the GROUP switch to cycle through an addinional yellow state that puts the numbered switches in CC mode.
When the GROUP switch is yellow, every one of the 5 numbered switches outputs a programmable CC message which can be configured in a number of ways, such as latched, unlatched, oscillating (more a sawtooth actually but still very useful), even tap tempo.
This boils down to the fact that you can effectively use it to select pedalboards AND within a pedalboard change to extended mode use the 5 switches to operate the plugins with MIDI learn!
Since the pedalboard can be easily found on ebay or other used gear shops for a small price, I really reccomend it.
EDIT: I forgot it also has 2 plugs for external expression pedals, that can be configured to output a CC message, so you also have that, too.