New kind of button. It´s possible?

[guitarrilia]

Hi!
I would like to make a suggestion for the "to-do" list.
I usually trigger the scenes with the PC keyboard, because it responds better to live situations, with no latency.
To create scenes in which the movement of the robots go in line with the BPM of music, I do the following:

- I do a scene (for example "Scene A") with a certain position of the robots and assign the "A" key to the button (with the button in SOLO mode).
- I do a "Scene B" with a different position and assign the "S" key to a new button (in SOLO mode, too).
- I make some colorful scenes (only color channels activated) and assigned them the keys "O" and "P".
- Then alternately press the keys "A" and "S" to the BPM of the song, and I can change the color by pressing "O" and "P" whenever I want.

It is a very, very simple way to do a show perfectly coordinated.
The problem is that I haven´t got enough keys to many positions scenes and colors scenes, or gobo scenes, or some other effects.
Therefore I suggest the following idea: create a "Sequential-Loop" kind of button.
The operation could be as follows:

- Create a "Scene C" with 4 steps, or chases, for example.
- Assign the "Scene C" to a button in Live app.
- Select the new option "Sequential-Loop" for this button, and SOLO option.
- Then, the first time you press this button activates the step (chase) 1 of "Scene C".
- The second time you press this button changes to step 2 of the same scene.
- The third time is changed to step 3.
- The fourth time is changed to step 4.
- The fifth time you press the button again to step 1.
- The sixth time is changed to step 2.
- And so on sequentially until another button is pressed, in which case off "Scene C" and activate the new scene.

I think it would be useful, especially for triggering scenes from the PC keyboard.
Thus, by pressing a single key can go through different steps or chases of the same scene, leaving more free keys for differents scenes of movement, or color changes, or gobo changes...

I hope you find it interesting and will soon be added in subsequent versions.
Greetings from Spain.

[tomrbland]

Does the "preset" setting not do what you are explaining?

[guitarrilia]

Hi tomrbland!

The "Preset" button allows me to select which step of the scene I want to play when I press the button,
but if I press that button twice then the scene goes out.

I would like that, pressing the same button again, the scene jumps to the next step
and, if "loop mode" is selected, this scene will not fade until I press another button for another scene.

I think that it is more dynamic, more accurate and faster than the BPM speed control,
especially in live performances. I would have no concerns about the tempo problems of the bands,
because I could control the changes of steps manually, by pressing again the same button to the
rhythm of the music.

Cheers.

[tomrbland]

In a preset you used to be able to move forwards and backwards by step with the page up and page down buttons. Would you be able to do what you need to if you could move backwards and forwards in a preset with a key press? (strangely enough I emailed support about this just the other day!)

On another note I am just trying to imagine how your feature would be implemented in the software and how it would work. For example if you want to de-select it how would you do that? As you could have one for movements and one for colour - so when you want to change your movement scene how do you select a new one and deselect the old one? Also if you want to deselect everything to black out, how would you do that? I think I understand your concept but I can't understand how it would be implemented in the software. I understand what you mean by more accurate and faster than BPM speed control. Allot of my lighting work is busking to live bands, so I do understand what you mean. I used to use presets for this (before V6 - it had the pageup/down shortcuts) but I do now busk the same way you run your shows - I "play" my keyboard. BPM is totally impossible if you have a prog band who really like to play in 13!!

[bcraytor]

I too have been looking for a way to keypress my way through a scene. Is it possible? I tried the page up and page down. Nothing. Is this in the works? Page Up and Page Down would be fine for me.

Thanks for a phenomenal product, but as the old saying goes..."He who is satisfied is lost"

[1stKingfish]

Hi There...

I strongly agree. It will be great if one can move through steps with a touch of a button. This feature can also be useful for theatre users, by programming a sequence of events for each scene. (Just an idea)

But there may even be an easier solution though it might not be as efficient. Instead of adding this ability to each button in live mode, a universal button will be much easier. Just like the "BPM Buttons" an additional button can be useful if it will act as kind of one click one beat mode. Adding a shortcut key will make it even easier!!! This will allow you to set a number of buttons to this mode so you can trigger multiple scenes to step at the same time.

By the way I LOVE this software... I may even marry it... X-D

[support]

The window "Button speed" presently contains: "Auto BPM", "Manual BPM" and "Manual speed".
We note in the TODO list: add option "Manual trigger" in this window.
No date for this, because working on a new big project.

[Arjan]

I "play" my keyboard. BPM is totally impossible if you have a prog band who really like to play in 13!!

Tell me about it. My band doesn't use odd time signatures that much but it sure ain't straight 4/4 either.

I'm wondering, would any of you guys be interested in some software that I'm developing that allows you to trigger buttons in ShowXpress more or less intelligently based on what chords or notes you play and what part of a song you're in? Here are some screenshots:

LiveCommanderDMXscreenshot1.png

LiveCommanderShowXpressScreenshot.png

I originally developed this software to allow me to control sound changes, splits and layers for all my keyboards and modules while playing from one single master keyboard. You can switch to the next 'stage' of a song using a footpedal (various ways to implement that). You can see a bit more about that functionality here. I've only recently started adding this DMX sync functionality so it's still a work in progress.

[tomrbland]

That looks really interesting. I would be interested to see it in use. (Luckily the band I was talking about have a dedicated tech team, so we run the show manually.)

[Arjan]

That looks really interesting. I would be interested to see it in use. (Luckily the band I was talking about have a dedicated tech team, so we run the show manually.)

I'll see if I can make some sort of demonstration video once I've done a bit more work on it. Right now I'm actually trying to create a simple test case for the developers of SweetLight/ShowXpress that will make ControlBoard crash consistently when it's processing MIDI input as I'm experiencing such crashes rather frequently.