Reset button on/off status without sending Midi messages

Question

Hi, I'm not sure if his is possible or not but any help would be appreciated. I'm trying to set up a custom lighting controller and wondering if there is any way to release the current "on" status of a button in a supercontrol/subcontrol group without sending the Midi message that would normally be sent when the button is turned off  so it would just clear any "on"  button statuses and not send any Midi messages  

I have a bunch of buttons grouped into sub controls of a knob that is a supercontroller so only one of the buttons can be selected at a time. They are configured so that you can turn each button (and corresponding light fixture) on or off, or when selecting another button in the group the one turns off and the other turns on.  I have several of these groups set up for different functions (Derby, Strobe, Wash, etc.) and this is all working great. This allows customization of the lighting while on a preset/scene for ultimate flexibility.

The problem is that when I switch to a new preset, any buttons that were "on" remain on but I would like to clear the status without pressing each one and as a result sending the corresponding Midi messages. Is this possible?

Comments

This isn't possible.

It's a feature suggestion, and an easy one thanks to changes made in 2.5.0 ("Fixed: Now no MIDI values are sent on MIDI Designer start, layout load, page load, nor reset to default template (Config -> Actions -> New") which kept echoing through the change sets for MD in 2.51, 2.52, and 2.53....

Send me an email to dan [at] mididesigner [dot] com and we can discuss how to get this to happen sooner, please.

Thanks!
Dan :: Author & CEO
MIDI Designer :: dream | create | play

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Wait: so "send on only" wouldn't help in any of these cases, right?

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Thanks for the fast reply! What I want to do is even kinda confusing me lol!

I tried the send on only and that removes the ablility to use the same button to turn the fixture on and off. Where it gets weird is that I have almost different layers of groups. I have several groups of buttons which are each linked to a separate knob (at this level I want the on and off messages to be sent). But then I put all of them together in another group linked to a button - as a sort of master clear - (at this level I don't want the off message to be sent). Yuk! :)

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Ok I realize this is confusing, but I may have figured out a solution based on the answers to these questions:

1. Is there a way to configure a button so that it doesn't send any Midi messages at all?
2. Is there a way for a momentary button to control a supercontroller knob so when the button is pressed, the knob goes to 0?

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#1 Well, um, that button wouldn't be very useful. But you could set it to sysex, but I don't think that's what you want.
#2 Yeah, just reverse the MIDI OFF and ON of the momentary and then make it send on only
#3 However, I think your earlier comment does give us some hope. Since a Button Group super can force the button group to be send-on only, you might be in luck. Well... actually I don't know, there's a lot to experiment with.

At the risk of stating the obvious in a clearly advanced conversation: save your real layout and mess around in a sandbox where you can test your concepts very easily, with a tiny set of throwaway controls. The LOG will help you know what's going out when. Much easier than working on your actual rig, IMHO.

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Yeah you're right. I was thinking that by adding another button that didn't send a Midi message to each subgroup (using hidden in play mode) but with the "send current value" option enabled in the supergroup, I could just hide the lit button and avoid sending the off Midi command, but it doesn't seem to work that way.

Thanks and I will take your advice and continue to experiment!

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That's actually a brilliant idea! It should work because now you have a way to shut the group to all OFF.... just make the button group supercontrol "button group is send on only" under superonctrol options.

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It seems like it should work but it doesn't. I still get an off message sent for each subgroup when it shuts off whatever buttons are active. I assume this is since my group hierarchy is as follows:

Group of buttons (for toggling fixture features on/off individually) < Hidden Knob(s) (each knob is a supercontroller of a different group of buttons) < Master Clear Button (supercontroller of group of knobs that each control a group of buttons). The master clear button sends a default value of "0" which selects the first button in each of the groups (which is set to be hidden) so it essentially resets the visible lit buttons to none.

So if I set the knob supercontroller setting to only send On messages, then I can't toggle off the fixtures individually at the button level. If I set the master clear button supercontroller setting to only send On messages, it only affects the knobs and doesn't affect the buttons so it essentially doesn't do anything.

So unless I misunderstood what you meant above, I'll have to set aside some time to sort this out. At least it is fun trying to think through this stuff!

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Oops.. I may have spoken too soon. I think I had something set wonky. If I get it working I'll follow up just in case anyone else wants to try this in the future.

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Seems like button group subcontrols act as send-on-only or not based on ONE of their button group supers (so they cannot be both send-on-only and NOT send on only)... however your investigation might give you other insights. Thanks.

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Did this turn out to be impossible? Thanks!

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Sorry for the delay, I wasn't able to figure out a way to do it without an off message being sent and haven't had time to do further experimentation so I'm still manually shutting off all of the buttons for now.

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Hmmm... alright, I'll need to think about this. It's a really odd one-off request, but perhaps there's some utility in providing a page OFF button so that you can change all parameters without sending. Or easier than that would be a ALL MIDI OFF button so you can twiddle and nothing goes out.