Minimzing duplication #745
Replies: 6 comments 17 replies
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I usually put all my constants in the init LUA script assigned to "Called when the panel has finished loading". You can put everything you need in this one and call them from other LUA scripts. 
What panel is it actually? |
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Thanks for the tip. I'd love to follow any/all best practices, but there doesn't seem to be much in the way of a document/outline for any of that. This is the Lexicon PCM 80 panel. The original supported the PCM 80 (1.10 OS) and the original 10 algorithms. Mine currently works with the PCM 80 and 81 and can read and edit all 42 algorithms (PCM 81 extras plus the Dual FX, Pitch FX and Vocal FX cards). I still need to add support for the original 1.0 OS of the PCM 80. As part of the reworking, I have cut the panel size down from 120 MB to 3.5 MB. There's still a lot of work to be done with it. I'm hoping to finish by March. I posted this excerpt thinking it might be interesting or useful to some folks showing that you can use text in the modulatorCustomIndex and then Lua can transform it into a table reference, a method call or anything else you might need. |
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you'll see in the panel above, the methods are a source of inspiration. The FX types and parameter units are stored like this : And the slider content like this (ex) : It's a nice way to assign your sliders with variable content. |
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That's definitely a good approach for a lot of things. I'm just reluctant to do that when a) the range for the same variable changes with the algorithm and b) when i have ranges like 0-2500, 0-1365, and 0-43690. I'd rather use uiSlider+uiLabel and a Lua method to generate the displayed value on the fly. |
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Sure you can generate the list on the fly with a Lua iteration loop. |
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Sorry for being unclear - I don't want to pre-generate any of those large lists. I call a method when the modulator value changes and then do a setText() to a label with the computed value. This goes back to the 'best practices' comment. I spent the past 40 years working as a programmer. Now with a family, house, dog, many other obligations, I don't have a ton of free time. If I spend 2 hours looking through other panels to try and find something, that might be all the time I have to work on this for a few days. SO I'm trying to be efficient and leverage what I know as much as possible. There's things I want to do, but I have no idea if I can or how hard it is to do it in the Ctrlr environment. |
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Indeed! Unless it's not linear you can use the min, max interval, decimal places, and suffix properties to set most of your faders. |
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Is this sending a 16 bit value? Can you show me the algorithm you use? local lowB, highB = un16(value)
local lb1, lb2 = unByte(lowB)
local hb1, hb2 = unByte(highB) |
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Working with sysex dumps, I found I needed a way to assemble and take apart various bytes/words, so I created these functions. I have a matching pair for 14 bit as well (I think I needed that for the Korg DL8000R/AM8000R boxes). function makeByte(first, second) function unByte(dataVal) function make16(first, second) function un16(dataVal) |
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Oh I see so a MSB/LSB of a 16 bit number is sent lsb,msb,lsb,msb as 4 bit nibbles across 4 bytes sysex? |
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Here's the chunk of code I'm using for the PCM 80/81 to send back a parameter value change (with some edits for clarity) There's a reason why no one has ever created an editor for the full PCM 80/81 units (all OS and memory updates and all cards). It's a huge web of entangled data, 40+ different algorithms, different ranges for the same parameter depending on context, and lots of undocumented areas. At some point in time, I'd love to get feedback from some one or two folks on ways to better use all aspects of the CtrlrX environment. Given the amount of proprietary/hard-won knowledge I've put into mapping out how these Lexicons work, I'm reluctant to post the entire panel publicly. |
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Yes, I understand how much hard work goes into producing software for these old units. There’s always the question of charging money for your hard work. But then you get into all sorts of software protection systems and registration and everything that goes with that, but Damien has been working on a solution to that. I’ve ended up just releasing everything for free, but recently I don’t show the source code-i.e..the .bpanelz files are not released. Still, coding 16 bit breakdown of sysex is probably, for a lot of people quite a challenge , so I might submit a Ctrlr method for doing that anyway. Maybe you might use it, because it could be faster than lua, but lua is still pretty quick. |
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I'm always happy to help folks when I can. Looking over my old files, I started work on these Lexicons in May of 2023 for another platform. Back in the day, I created a few editors on the Lemuur platform (software, not the custom hw). A year+ of work, hundreds of downloads, $0 in contributions to date. Again, almost 40 years of sw development experience under my belt, so if people have programming/logic type problems, I'm happy to try and help. In this particular case, I feel that if I can create something solid and complete, I'd like to get some compensation for the time and effort spent on it. Feel free to use/modify anything I put out on line here. If you want to discuss Lexicon intricacies, I'm also open to that. They seemed to have a few common approaches to sysex processing across their hardware over the years. |
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I have created a build that handles 16 bit values - it's for people who might have trouble working out the algorithms; of course you were able to do that. I think you are on Mac? Anyway, there are releases for Windows,Linux and macOS To send a 16 bit lsb first you would do something like f0 q0 q1 q2 q3 f7 in the editor (no lua)
With lua CUSTINDEX="modulatorCustomIndex"
-- send
local data = panel:getModulatorValuesAsData(CUSTINDEX, CtrlrPanel.Encode16bitLsbFirst, 4, false)
panel:sendMidiMessageNow(CtrlrMidiMessage(string.format("%s %s %s",HEADER,data:toHexString(1),EOX)))
-- receive
local headerSize=MemoryBlock(HEADER):getSize()
panel:setModulatorValuesFromData(midi:getData(), CUSTINDEX, CtrlrPanel.Encode16bitLsbFirst,-headerSize, 4, false) |
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Nice. Anything that makes it clearer/easier for a developer is a win. |
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Extreme bouts of frustration here. I make progress, then want to do something that doesn't seem to be clearly explained, and spend an hour+ guessing... Specific example for today: There's a bunch of properties and such that I can see when I open the Utility tab for a modulator. no combination I've tried works yet. Is it even a property I can retrieve? |
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This is returning the name of the callback script assigned to console output is : if you're using getModulatorByName() you first need to define the mod : |
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I never called it though, because when you update the value of a modulator your don't want to check the assigned lua method. It's like a useless self-check. You could even get into a loop in someways. What do you want to achieve with that property? Do you want to set the property instead and switch your callback lua method in some case? |
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I must have had some spelling/capitalization type error. It's working now. So, the need is that the various controls have formatting methods that I use for displaying values with units, etc. The PCM 80 has a basic Mod Matrix kind of thing where you pick a source and a target and then you can have up to 8 points defining what happens when the source changes. So you might have source value 0, tgt is pan right, source=64 tgt = pan center, source=127, tgt=pan left. I want to display the target values at each point using the correct range and units and the easiest way to do that is to call the correct formatters when a target is selected. I can pass is a unique source value to the formatter to prevent loops/extra MIDI, etc. EDIT - yeah, it was a misspelling in the actual modulator name part of the statement. I actually had the luaModulator.... part correct. |
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I decided I wanted to revamp and extend an existing effects unit panel. As part of this task, I wanted to eliminate as much duplication and hard-coding as possible. Since the effects unit has between 10 and 42 different algorithms, simply creating a group per algorithm and duplicating the controls and such would (IMHO) become very unwieldy, so I came up with an approach to re-use a single control across each algorithm that references it. Hopefully someone else may find this approach useful or at maybe interesting.
Patch dumps will have a parameter in different offsets in the dump depending on the algorithm used. I decided to create a table of offsets for the parameters and a single Lua method to send the MIDI info back the the effects unit as you edit the values.
For example, take the reverb size parameter. Here is the offsets in the sysex dump for each algorithm. In algorithms that it is not used, I put a "-1".
sz = {[0]=16,16,17,-1,19,67,77,70,71,80,70,70,-1,71,73,78,78,-1,79,81,73,73,-1,74,76,74,74,-1,75,77, 81, 81,-1, 82,84,62,62,-1} -- Reverb Sizeduring the panel load, the size param is referenced as usual:
reverb_design_size = panel:getModulatorByName("reverb_design_size")When a dump is received, the data is parsed into tables that I need (type1Data, type1Flags, type2Data, ...) and various other things are captured like the algorithm used, device ID, and so on.
To assign the data from the dump to the parameters, a simple check can be done:
when a user edits a parameter, instead of using a hard-coded sysex string attached to the uiSlider, I call a function tied to the luaModulatorValueChange instead.
Note that I use the size table name as the modulatorCustomIndex
the sendMIDI() function is where the translation trick happens:
by using the array name as the index and then transforming it to a table lookup, the single reverb_size control can be used anywhere I need it. Also, since there's only 1 place where I send parameter edits back to the unit, once it is working, it works for all parameters and I can have parameters to control things like the revision of the device and even talk to more than one device using the devID parameter to distinguish multiples.
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