Traktor Pro with VCI-100 (MISA 4 Deck, 32 HotCue, Master Tempo, Key Locks, Preview)

[lsmith]

ok .. i have already gotten some interesting results.
i now have the shift action to get the previews going. i chose a different order. from top to bottom: load, play/pause, seek forward, seek backward

i also turned the cross fader into a deck focus selector when shift is pressed. also if i press snap and shift i get a keylock on the active deck.

[lsmith]

hmm .. i am stuck with changing the juggle mode to support 5-8. it seems the "juggle on" and the "juggle knob" are both the same modifier #3. this is also why pressing the juggle on button, while the juggle knob is active, deactivates the juggle mode, which i consider to be a serious bug. know i am not sure how to proceed, it seems that the DJTT tsi already uses up all available 8 modifiers, so i cannot add another modifier. and this will probably not help anyways because then all the normal mappings would need a third modifier. hmm i so feel that it must be possible .. somehow.

[misa]

What if the knob changes mod3 from 0 to 1 to activate JUGGLE mode and make HotCues 1-4 accessible on both sides. Once mod3 is equal to 1, the JUGGLE button can toggle between mod3=1 and mod3=2. Mod3=2 assigns 1-4 on left and 5-8 on right. You can go back and forth until you turn the knob back to mod3=0 and return to the default transport controls. Or you can do away completely with the knob and just use the JUGGLE button to swith between mod3=0 to 1 to 2 back to 0. You'll have to add in several lines of assignments for the HotCues in different states of mod3.

I don't have my personal computer or VCI with me, but it seems workable. I'll help out if you haven't got it to work over the weekend.

[lsmith]

ok am getting closer to complete my concept:
1) normal mode (sync, drop, pause, play on each side), juggle button LED not lid
2) holding juggle button OR juggle knob switches to hotcue 1-4 on each side for each deck, the juggle button LED is lid
3) holding juggle button AND juggle knob switches to hotcue 1-8 for the deck in focus, the juggle button LED is lid

For this purpose I only want to use a single modifier because in the end I also want to include a deck c/d modifier to toggle deck selection between A-C and B-D.
So I made a table with the different states and values I want to assign to the modifier.:

mod | bt. | bt. led | knob | b1    | b2    | b3    | b4    | b5    | b6    | b7    | b8    |
0   | 0   | 0       | 0    | dA s  | dA d  | dA p  | dA pl | dB s  | dB d  | dB p  | dB pl | 1) normal mode
1   | 0   | 1       | 1    | dA h1 | dA h2 | dA h3 | dA h4 | dB h1 | dB h2 | dB h3 | dB h4 | 2) knob on
2   | 1   | 1       | 0    | dA h1 | dA h2 | dA h3 | dA h4 | dB h1 | dB h2 | dB h3 | dB h4 | 2) button on
3   | 1   | 1       | 1    | dF h1 | dF h2 | dF h3 | dF h4 | dF h5 | dF h6 | dF h7 | dF h8 | 3) button+knob on

short explanation of the above:
mod = modifier value
bt. = juggle button
bt. led = juggle button led
knob = juggle knob
b1-8 = the 8 buttons at the bottom
dA = deck A
dB = deck B
dF = deck with focus
h1-8 = hotcue 1-8
s = sync
d = drop
p = pause
pl = play

Example: dA h1 means deck A hotcue 1

I got it working .. well almost.
For test purposes I assigned another button that selects the deck based on the modifier value. So for value 0 it selects deck A, value 1 deck B, value 2 deck C and value 3 deck D.

Here is a screenshot:


Note that the 6 hold commands set M3 to the follow values from top to bottom: 1, 1, 3, 2, 2, 3

What works:
1) normal mode works just fine
2) holding either the button or knob works just fine

Issues:
3) holding both the button and knob doesn't work

Specifically when I turn on the juggle knob and then hold the juggle button it works as expected. However when I release it doesn't jump back to just juggle knob on (it stays at M3=4). Furthermore when I then press the juggle button after that again, it jumps back to normal mode (M3=0). Also when I disable the juggle knob and then enable the juggle knob again while already holding the juggle button it doesn't set M3=3, rather it sets M3=2. When I release the juggle button then, it stays at M3=2 which is correct.

[lsmith]

Hmm .. now things are really getting wierd .. it seems like the order in how i define the midi mappings matters.

Also as you can see in the above mappings, i am doing M3=0 checks and setting to the same value as if M3 would not be set at all. It was my understanding that an unset modifier has the value 0, but I guess not.

Really fishy stuff. Maybe its time to give up on modifiers and move to bomes. Especially now that I discovered that there isn't really much hope in trying to use tools to merge differences between tsi's due to the crappy XML format Traktor Pro uses to store its preferences.

[Zac Kyoti]

lsmith: From my understanding "hold" won't let a modifier go back to the previous state, but just sends it back to default (zero) when released. Can you set things up so that the juggle functions just work as a toggle instead? That way you turn the unit on (M3=0), then the first time you hit the juggle button or knob it goes into it's variable state, and stays there, switching between your various values when you turn it on or off? IE setup a duplicate modifer, to enter the sequence from zero, then the various modifier commands to do what you are wanting. I'm sorry about not being more specific, but I haven't looked at this tsi yet...

[lsmith]

Ok, got it to work using bome's. juggle button + juggle knob = hotcue 1-8 on the focused deck. also fixed the bug where pressing the juggle button when the juggle knob is turned would take you out of juggle mode.

Here is the bome script and my current TSI with all its modifications.
For now I did not remove all the modifiers, but I might eventually do this.

I should also note that I keep finding commands, that do not seem to do anything in Ean's TSI. I guess a resizeable preference window (I have hopes this will come in TP 1.2) will go along way to help find stuff like these kind of accidental mappings.

Edit: I have removed the attachments. Instead check out my blog posts. It contains links to the current versions of the code and a video showing off the implementation.

[misa]

i just watched your vid...i'm glad you were able to implement everything you were looking for through bomes

i too was thinking about trying bomes out, especially since the VCI-100 and the new APC40 have several MIDI note and cc values repeated...and it seems you have increased control of LEDs as well

how was your experience with bomes?

[lsmith]

Bomes so far as given me the flexibility to do what I want with fairly minimal fuss. The stuff in the video took me 3-4 hours to implement with zero prior knowledge of bome's.

That being said, bome's tries really hard to keep things simple. So some things require more so called "translators" than necessary. More over it forces you to write all the code using their forms which provide drop downs for the different type of control structures, expressions and assignments. As a programmer I wouldn't mind just being able to call the underlying API directly. But I think that for non programmers this helps a lot in keeping things somewhat structured and maintainable.

[Zac Kyoti]

lsmith- It looks like I may have to purchase and learn the bome's software too, I want to develop a hybrid TPro/Live set-up that it seems can't be done without a translator. But, what is your honest opinion on the learning curve for someone with no scripting experience? I know you are a programmer, so think back before you knew what you know now I've got a good head for logic and have the TPro modifier system in the bag, but how friendly is bome's for the non-programmer?