"Radio Button" - "Resend" option? (exclusive button groups)

Question

Would a possible solution to audios' problem regarding resending of data by pressing a button already selected be to incorporate a "Resend" button into radio button arrays (as a first or last button) that would resend the data appropriate to the already selected button.  Seems like a duplication of function but in reality it would prevent accidental resending of data where the button pressed has already been selected. MD would test for the existing state of a button before executing it's function, and only permit resending via the"Resend" button.

It's nothing more than a safeguard that would prevent the disasters that audio refers to. Could be added to other button/control groups as well.

Comments

I like the idea of a send button much more than a resend button. It's like send on release. It could be a general solution for button groups--by tying the super to a send button--and for other controls. Get it dialed in and then shoot.

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Give a bloke some food items and he'll maybe cook a meal (or if he's really savvy he'll get the wife to!), give the same ingredients to a chef and he'll create a sumptuous feast.

When are you likely to be cooking the SEND button Dan (timeframe)?

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Nice metaphoring.

It's not going to be coming out in 1.5.0 (in beta already), but in the next few months I'll get into this smaller stuff. I'd love to include this in a release that also adds an additional sysex variable or two, and transpose...

Anyway, hoping sooner than later. I'll keep you posted. Thanks for the enthusiasm and kind words.

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http://midiDR.com/bounceback

Answer 1

This has been implemented in MIDI Designer 1.5.3.

See the blog article on Bounce Back and the videos in English and Spanish.

Answer 2

This has been implemented in MIDI Designer 1.5.3.

See the blog article on Bounce Back and the videos in English and Spanish.

Answer 3

It's one possibility, for sure. However, since screen space is so limited, a possibly better way would be to have a single tap on the button do nothing if the button was the most recent one in the group to be pressed (thus avoiding unintentional and undesired message events), and a double tap on the button generate a "Resend" message event.

I like this!

Audios

p.s. And how about a two-finger rotation gesture cause a reversal of the message bits??? Just kidding...

Comments

I like that suggestion and it's relatively easy to implement. I'll consider it for sure.

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I meant the actual suggestion, not the bit-reversal ;)

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we ended up going with making this a design-time option, but please let me know if it doesn't work for you and in what case. Thanks!

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These radio buttons are the main thing I want to use Midi designer for. This works perfectly when I finger press the buttons, or if I turn the super controller for them. The behaviour is inconsistent if I use amything otehr than a finger press to change these buttons. If I 'learn' MIDI on these buttons, an extra button will turn on without turning of the current button, so that I end up with several radio buttons turned on at the same time.

I'm actually trying to have different parts of a song in Loopy, and to use Midi Designer to move to the next loop (by muting the current loop and playing the next one when the start marker is reached next). I can do this manually with radio buttons, but what I really want to be able to do is press the one pedal that corresponds with the next part of the song I want to play, and have Midi Designer handle the turning off of the current loop (hence the hope that the radio buttons would achieve this).

For the moment, I'm stymied and am not using Midi Designer.

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Hi and thanks for your comment. We'll be looking at this question late today or tomorrow again and doing some testing to see what workarounds are possible in MIDI Designer for now. We're hoping that MD can do what you need as is, but if not, we'll change the App.

Also, would you be willing to help beta test MD for your situation if no workaround is available? Thanks!

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garywi06, what exactly are you using to trigger these buttons from external MIDI?

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Idea: Can a 'stepper button' make a super control change to a particular value rather than just the next or previous value?

Before I go any further, thanks for your attention. People on the Loopy and audiobus forums were saying how responsive support for Midi Designer is... I second that.

I've got a technical background and am more than happy to beta test anything you can throw at me. Occasionally my availability drops off and I'll take a few days to respond, but normally am pretty reliable.

Apologies for the length of the rest of this post, but I want to give you some detail, just in case someone has a suggestion that might solve my problem.

What worked:
I followed the video and successfully established a supercontrol knob to control three sub buttons. These behave exactly as radio buttons when I either turn the knob, or press one of these buttons. I also added stepper knobs to control the slider, and these work perfectly as well. I later expanded this experiment to 12 buttons and all is still well :)

What doesn't work:
(Note: if it helps, I've put a video of this problem on youtube -)

After some more testing, I now realise the problem I was having has nothing to do with MIDI. I established some buttons that directly access the buttons above (in effect a second super control for each button). Rather than only being able to step, I wanted to sometimes go from, say track 1, straight to track 5 (rather than pressing the "up" stepper button 4 or so times). I was hoping a super controlling button would turn that radio button on, and that the slider would react accordingly and turn off the current button. This doesn't happen.

If I have the slider set, say, to activate button 1 and I press any 'direct access' (ie super) button, say the one for track 4... this doesn't deactivate track 1, but allows track 4 to come on *as well as* track 1. In other words, these second supercontrollers have disrupted the radio button effect of the slider super control.

What *may* work (but I don't know how to do it)!
Rather than having a second set of buttons directly accessing the sub buttons, is there a way I can, in a similar fashion to the stepper buttons, control the slider and poke a value to it of, say 4

Background - What I'm trying to achieve:
I have an FCB1010 that I want to use to control Loopy HD where I turn on loops exclusively (like radio buttons). At the moment, I have to press pedal corresponding to the loop currently playing (to turn it off) as well as the pedal of the next loop I want to play (to turn this loop on). Loopy has a 'solo' feature, but I haven't been able to get it to reliably do what I want (I don't think it was designed for soloing loops one after another as I want).

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Hi Gary, yes, you can set values arbitrarily to a knob with a button supercontrol. If it's a momentary button, in supercontrol options there's an option for "Not Steppers" which will then cause it to set the knob to one value (on) and another (off). To avoid this, under Advanced use "Send On Only."

This is in fact how we're doing this from external pedalboards, generally. Buttons that controls the supercontrol for the button group.

Let me know how this proceeds, please. Glad for the kind words and your passion for your MIDI-Designer-based project.

Best!
Dan

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Midi Designer now does everything I needed it to do! As suggested above, I created 'non-stepper' buttons, that were labelled with a specific value, and had the on (max) value of that number. say, for track 4, the max value was 4. I made them send only, because I didn't want different values being used on press and unpress (or even the same value twice if I set max and min values the same).

The only slight difficulty I had was figuring out the values of the 'ticks'. The master I'm trying to control has 12 steps, and controls 12 sub buttons radio button style (exclusively). However the buttons that prod the controller to go to a particular value don't have the option of named ticks, or setting the number of ticks at all, so I simply divided 128 by 12 and picked value numbers within each of the 12 tick 'windows'. I think this is the only way to do this??

A question about left and right pedal controls:

I've got two pages, with two representations of the pedal board - one on the left, one on the right, except that the left is toggle, whereas the one on the right is momentary (driving the radio buttons, hence don't want this to toggle on and off).

I need these two different ways of using the pedal board. It works well, except that now I get a constant warning that the other page (the hidden one) has supers with no subs assigned - will send no midi - which is exactly what I was trying to do. I wanted to hide the page I'm not using so that I can use this pedal board in momentary mode when I'm building loops, and toggle mode when I'm driving the radio buttons for performance mode (later on).

Have I configured things the wrong way, or is there some way I can get rid of the warning that the side I'm not using is... as I intended... not going to send any MIDI signals :)

Anyone have any suggestions?

BTW, I've appropriately reviewed MD as a thankyou for the great design that makes something so enormously complicated (MIDI) much more manageable and as simple as it can be, and for the great suppport. I came here on a recommendation from Loopy and Audiobus forums and will give them some positive feedback on those forums as well.


Great stuff.



Gary

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Hi Gary,

First off, thanks so much, and very glad we're able to say at least one "whoot!" together.

Secondly, regarding the constant warning: it happens more than once? It's supposed to show ONCE and be non-blocking. If that's not the case, it's a bug. On the other hand, why are they supercontrols with no subcontrols? What are you trying to achieve there? Sorry if this is already in your comments, but it's a lot to parse.

Thanks!

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I want to use my pedal board on one page as momentary, and at other times on another page as toggle. I made an assumption that the left and right pedal boards could be used as alternate ways of representing one physical pedal board? My idea was to have a blank left page 1, controlled by right page (toggle pedal board controls), and a blank right page 2, so that left pedal board could control momentary.

I now realise your warning is 'per super control' not 'per page'. If I press the same control a second time, the warning doesn't come up (ie perfect non-blocking warning). But it comes up for first press on each pedal board button (and I have 10)!

Happy to do more testing or send you my layout via email. I note that the behaviour is exactly the same, whether I press my physical pedal, or the 'pedal board super control' associated with it. I updated to 1.6.2 yesterday morning (before testing).

My options:
option 1:
I think I already know the work around - diff layouts, rather than diff pages within one layout, because I have no intention of changing these during performance.

option 2:
'dummy' sub controls (that send unimplemented MIDI) on pages that are currently blank

option 3???

Still extremely happy that MIDI designer can do all this for me :)

Gary

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I'm assuming that you're talking about "Pedalboards" in MIDI Designer.

http://mididesigner.com/qa/15/pedalboards-explanation

I might be missing your point, and I have not personally tested this with pedalboards, but there's an extra button that can be invoked to make momentary buttons act as toggles. It's on the Relationships page and it's called "Latch (Make Toggle)".

Notes:
1) you cannot ASSIGN the toggle button if they're on a pedalboard. This is  a bug. You have to bring them onto a regular page, set stuff up, and then drag them back.
2) they might not respond as toggles to external hardware. Let me know how this turns out if you do test it, please.

Thanks!
Dan

Answer 4

It's one possibility, for sure. However, since screen space is so limited, a possibly better way would be to have a single tap on the button do nothing if the button was the most recent one in the group to be pressed (thus avoiding unintentional and undesired message events), and a double tap on the button generate a "Resend" message event.

I like this!

Audios

p.s. And how about a two-finger rotation gesture cause a reversal of the message bits??? Just kidding...