Encoder Page Questions

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rriegner
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Joined: Wed Nov 02, 2016 5:03 pm

Encoder Page Questions

Post by rriegner » Wed Nov 02, 2016 10:16 pm

First off, thanks for making this app. I love it. It has saved me so much time as a programmer and board operator. I have a couple questions about the encoder page, though.

Is there acceleration on the encoders? I seem to have a lot of trouble with the speed of them. If I whip my finger around in a circle, the value moves rather slowly, but if I very slowly move around the encoder, I can get them to move very far for one revolution. It's almost like they have backwards acceleration? Maybe it's a device thing. I'm running a Galaxy S5 on Android 6.0.1.

Also, is there a way to post the encoder attribute to the command line so I can enter a manual value with the keypad? And is there a way to unmap an attribute from a wheel? Once a wheel has something assigned, I can't find a way to clear it for other layouts. If not, do you have plans to implement something like this? Or maybe a version like the encoder pages on the console?

Thanks.

P.S. Tiny bug: When opening the app from the background (i.e. from lock or switching apps) it reconnects and loads the remote page, but the highlighted tab at the top stays on whatever page was open last.

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Mothership
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Re: Encoder Page Questions

Post by Mothership » Wed Nov 02, 2016 11:08 pm

Thanks for the Feedback.

Encoders "Slipping" - This is more or less a device thing. The device has to register the "movement" and tell the App - at which time we send EOS a "Tick" on the encoder. I've noticed the same kinds of problems with most every device I've tried. This is the downside to making virtual Encoders - rather than a slider or XY pad. XY pads allow you to make very large changes rapidly - but has no fine control.

I've been considering making the Course setting on Encoders very course - maybe x4 what it is now.


Posting Encoder Attributes - I don't think we have an easy path to this at the moment. I'd have to look closer at our OSC choices through EOS. If you hit the Min/Max or Home buttons EOS posts the Attribute to the command line. You could then Shift + Enter and hit Clear - that would give you "Channel # Attribute" which you could then @ 50.


Clearing Encoders... Sigh. I know. We ran out of developer time. On the Encoders page of the website is a little walkthrough on what I do to make clear pages. http://www.alienstagecraft.com/encoders.html

It's less than ideal - but it's what I got for now.

Thanks for the Bug report. We'll see if we can track it down.

rriegner
Posts: 7
Joined: Wed Nov 02, 2016 5:03 pm

Re: Encoder Page Questions

Post by rriegner » Thu Nov 03, 2016 1:20 am

Oh, interesting. Thanks for the insight into how it works. So it's kind of like the OSC interface is "physically" rotating the encoder? I'm just making assumptions and talking out my ass at this point, but I looked through the OSC commands and didn't see a Max, so how are you doing that? Does that mean that for Min/Max/Home, is it virutally pressing the encoder followed by a softkey? If so, could you not just press the encoder, which posts its attribute? It's probably more complicated than I'm making it, but I feel like there has to be a way to do it somehow...

As for course vs fine, I personally think course is good where it is (though I now realize it is also dependent on console settings). I would prefer a 4x or so finer fine control. Most of what I am using it for is touching up moving light focus/shutters on stage.

Thanks for the tips and for doing what you do. App development can be a hard and thankless endeavor. Best of luck and looking forward to future updates.

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Mothership
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Re: Encoder Page Questions

Post by Mothership » Thu Nov 03, 2016 8:33 pm

So when you turn the encoder we send eos the instruction to move a specific wheel number. All we really have control over is how many "ticks" to move the wheel - with 1 being the smallest increment.

It was meant to be 32 ticks per revolution - so going to 100% would take 3 revolutions. But these devices seem to not register the movement at certain speeds. That's where the reverse acceleration feeling comes from.


In terms of clicking the encoder to post an attribute - we could do it but I think it would lead to a fair amount of accidental command line changes. It's probably better to write a macro that would grab the channel and attribute using the previous method I mentioned.

P

Druuka
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Joined: Fri Aug 08, 2014 7:29 pm

Re: Encoder Page Questions

Post by Druuka » Sun Nov 13, 2016 9:54 pm

I will take a look at the android app to see what it is doing waking from sleep mode.

Thanks for the report.

Andrew

samhunt
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Joined: Thu Nov 24, 2016 12:24 pm

Re: Encoder Page Questions

Post by samhunt » Thu Nov 24, 2016 6:07 pm

I know this is a slightly old topic, but wanted to add my two cents.

I'm using a Gio to control a Catalyst media server, and for the keystone values, each 16-bit value is important, and makes a noticeable difference. On the MA2, I used macros to adjust the keystone parameters by a single value, and I can recreate that on the Gio, but would like to request an ultra-fine mode for the encoder page too please! Even breathing on the encoder makes the keystone values shoot all over the place.

Otherwise, the app is absolutely fantastic! I was using screen sharing into a MA2onPC to do my lineups, but using this app with the Gio is much more responsive.

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Mothership
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Re: Encoder Page Questions

Post by Mothership » Fri Nov 25, 2016 3:59 am

16 Bit encoder control is something we need to look at.

As I remember we could send a "encoder/fine" command to EOS - but that made all the OSC encoders into fine mode (EOS 16 bit Fine mode)

It felt a little strange to toggle everything - so we decided to handle Coarse/Fine inside the App rather than through EOS.

From this conversation I think we need to :

1) Make Coarse a lot more coarse so you can pan a light 300* in a reasonable amount of time

2) Leave Fine alone

3) Add a toggle button to turn on EOS 16 Bit Fine - and do so in a way that is pretty obvious it is enabled.

samhunt
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Joined: Thu Nov 24, 2016 12:24 pm

Re: Encoder Page Questions

Post by samhunt » Fri Nov 25, 2016 11:53 am

Yeah, that sounds reasonable to me. Shame you can't toggle encoders into the ultrafine mode individually, but for video it's best that they're all in 16 bit mode anyway - I'm forever holding down the shift key while moving encoders!

Druuka
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Joined: Fri Aug 08, 2014 7:29 pm

Re: Encoder Page Questions

Post by Druuka » Wed Jan 11, 2017 11:07 pm

In oscRFR version 1.2.2 we have made changes to the encoder code.
Coarse is now very fast.
Fine is the same as it was
We added a Super Fine mode (sf) that put the individual encoder in 16bit fine mode.
Let us know how this works for your workflow.

Thanks,

Andrew Webberley

rriegner
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Joined: Wed Nov 02, 2016 5:03 pm

Re: Encoder Page Questions

Post by rriegner » Wed Jan 11, 2017 11:40 pm

Great to hear that! I will try it out on my next job and let you know how it works.

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