How to : display internal connection status in panel view?

Bolle · 2022-05-21T14:49:44+00:00

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Hi everyone,

I'm messing around with something and i need some help or advice to achieve a visual thing.

I'm looking for a way to display the active/inactive status of an internal connection on the panel view. As in: a lamp or image that pops up when such and such connection is made / is active. Not a measurement / representation of the signal coming through, but the actual status of the connection itself.

Many thanks in advance if anyone has a tip.

Greets,

Bolle

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colB

It's possible, but very cumbersome/clunky to do, what's it for?

Bolle

I'm looking into maybe reskinning an old MS-20 with patch bay.

As it is now, only the input ports are built in a way that allows for three visual states per port, by use of stacked macros. 1) unconnected state 2) all available input ports light up upon clicking/dragging an output port and 3) the connected state of the port. I had hoped to display the connected state of both the output and input ports.

It doesn't look good when only the input ports have that "connected" look.

Greets,

Bolle

colB

In that context, I guess it depends on how the patching system is using the connections.

I think that to achieve what you want, you would need a polling system, where the IC send sends regularly - once per display clock, and the receive polls the connection to check if it's receiving.

This is complicated by the fact that the Primary layer tries to be clever and help us by applying an invisible step filter that can't be switched off (always so very helpful :)).

So you need a way to ensure that the signal always changes. It's problematic though because of synchronisation issues... so it really depends on how the ICs are being used. What the value range is, how often data is sent, is it periodic or irregular etc.

It could be a custom clock with a flip flopping value that is applied to the signal pre send and is separately distributed and can then be subtracted...

Or better/easier would be just toggling between adding some large value and zero, which you then just compare with and subtract at the other end. This only works if the signals being handled by the IC connections don't need a large resolution...

Like I said, it's awkward, but if you can get it working, it shouldn't use a lot of cpu, because it only needs to happen on the display clock...

I wonder if there's a better way by harnessing the patching system itself? have you reverse engineered that so you understand how it operates? There must be some structure that 'knows' what's attached and what isn't?

Or is it all hacked on top of the IC send receive system?

colB

Here's a sketch of what I was describing.

Hopefully there's a better way ;)

IC sensor.zip

(it's not really a sensor - just pretending to be one)

Bolle

Yeah. The patch bay build is pretty complicated (at least for a novice builder like me), but as you said i think my best bet is to try and apply the same logic as the input ports to the output ports, only in reverse. I had hoped for a quick fix but that's not going to happen.

It's going to be some time before i get to that though. I only work on it sparingly (basically only when i'm bored). The first thing i want to do is simply apply a reskin with the build as-is. So anyone using the original can transfer their presets and snapshots seamlessly.

After that i will get rid of some of the extras that don't really make much sense and that have been added to the build over time, and only then get to modifying the patch bay to look and behave the way i want it to.

So: your reply is very much appreciated and i will get back to this. Eventually. 😁

Many thanks, Colin!

Greets,

Bolle

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