Stepped Dials

This article covers helpful odds and ends about using Stepped Dials.

Radio Buttons, too! Most of this information also applies to Radio Buttons.

State Feedback Note

A common headscratcher is dial steps or radio button selections changing when you don't expect them to. This happens when State Feedback is on but you don't actually want to have it on. By default, Loopy Pro widgets have state feedback turn on so that their highlighting/selection reflects the state of the objects they control. If a stepped dial or radio button group is set up to select Audio Unit presets, choosing a preset from the preset popup will change the related dial's selection. A dial that selects clips, will self-adjust if you change the clip selection without the dial.

Sometimes you do not want state feedback! Sometimes, you want a dial or radio buttons to remain set at the selection you made or scrolled to with an action and only want it to change in response to user interaction or an explicit action. For example, you may set up a dial the performs a series of actions and you only want the dial step to change when you trigger the widget. Use the icon in the widget's editor to set State Feedback to Disabled.

Techniques

Nudging Dials

While you can use touch to scroll a stepped dial (or select a radio button), it is often useful to be able to use a button or MIDI message to step through a dial or radio button group. To step forwards or backwards, you use the Trigger Widget action.

• Choose the widget you want to nudge as the target.
• In the Trigger Widget action panel, choose Scroll as the action.
• In the Trigger Widget action panel, choose Nudge Value as the Adjustment.
• Set the nudge amount, direction and Wrap Around setting as needed.
• Set the Perform Action setting to either Change or Activation Trigger. When Change is chosen, the action will be triggered as soon as the step changes. If Activation Trigger is chosen, the new step will not be triggered till you explicitly activate/trigger the widget's current step with an action (or by double-tapping).

• Advancing the dial with a tap. It is often convenient to be able to step a dial by tapping on it. To step a dial with a tap on the dial, add Trigger Widget as the dial's Press action in the widget's editor and choose the widget as the target and proceed as described above.

Advancing Dials Without Triggering

When using Stepped Dials, it is often useful to be able to change dial steps without triggering a new action. You might think of this as preparing a dial to act so that it will take the desired action when you trigger it.

In version 2.x

Set-up. Stepped Dials and Radio Buttons have a setting that determines when their actions are triggered. In order to advance a dial without triggering:

• Enter canvas edit mode.
• Tap on the dial or radio button group to bring up its edit window.
• Tap on the gear wheel icon to bring up its options.
• Set the Perform Action On option to Activation Trigger.
• OPTIONAL: set the State Feedback option to the appropriate setting (which will vary depending on how you are using the widget).

Triggering. Now that the dial is set not to trigger when changing the step, there are two ways to trigger the current step:

• Method #1: Double-tap the dial and the current step will be activated.
• Method #2: Use the Trigger Widget action from a MIDI Binding or widget. Select your dial as the Trigger Widget action's target. Tap on the displayed action to pop up the options. Choose Activate Current Value/Retrigger.

Changing the step. You can change the step by scrolling the dial by hand or using a Trigger Widget action to select or scroll the dial.

In version 1.x

This method will work in version 2 also, but you will probably want to use the much simpler method described in the section above.

In version 1.x of Loopy Pro, the best way to set up is to set up a pair of steps per action block (the action or actions to be performed when the step is activated). The first step of the pair has the name associated with the action but no actions itself. Let's call that the name step. The second step of the pair has the action or actions to perform plus an action to set the step back to the empty step (or forward to another empty step).

NOTE: Set the dial’s state feedback setting to Disabled.

For example, you might have this dial set-up

• Step 1: Stop All
  • no actions
• Step 2: (stop all actions)
  • Stop Recording Last Tapped Clip
  • Stop All Clips
  • Trigger Widget (this widget)->Nudge 1 (positions the dial at step 3)
• Step 3: Play Clips 1&2
  • no actions
• Step 4: (play clips actions)
  • Play Clips 1&2
  • Trigger Widget (this widget)->Select 1 (set this dial to the Stop All all step)

To use a dial that is set up this way, you use nudge actions to move the dial between steps. To perform the actions that go with the names step, nudge the dial one. To move between named steps without triggering any actions, nudge by 2. Turn on wrapround as needed.

There are several ways that you can scroll between the empty steps. If the dial starts with an empty step, nudge the dial by 2 or -2 to go to the next or previous empty step. You may also use buttons to go directly to a particular step.

Nudging. See the section Nudging Dials on this page for instruction on setting up nudging.

Next Trigger-Like Setup

Loopy Pro’s action-timing options have a Next Trigger option that is a quick way to set up a button or MIDI Binding to step through actions.

The Next Trigger timing option has a drawback: there isn’t a way to interrupt or reset the trigger sequence if you want to start over or skip ahead. Stepped Dials (and radio buttons) are the way to go when you want to step through actions and have the ability to reset your place or skip ahead. This section describes setup that mimics the ‘next trigger’ setup of a button or MIDI Binding.

Once you have created your dial and are in canvas edit mode, set up the dial as follows:

• Tap on the dial to edit it.
• Tap on the gear wheel icon to edit its options.
• Set Perform Actions On to Activation Trigger.
• Set State Feedback to Disabled as we don’t want Loopy Pro’s state to change the step on its own. We only want the dial to advance in response to a trigger.
• To each step, add the actions to be performed.
• To each step, add a Trigger Widget action that advances this dial’s step using these settings:
  • As the action, choose Scroll.
  • As the adjustment, choose Nudge.
  • Turn on the Wrap Around option.
  • Set Perform Actions to Activation Trigger.

The dial is now set up so that when a step is triggered, the dial will perform the current step’s actions and advance to the next step (without performing the next step’s actions).

To trigger and advance the dial, set up a Trigger Widget action that targets the dial. As the Trigger Widget action’s action, choose Activate Current Value/Retrigger.

You can add this as the press action of the dial itself. If you do this, you can set up a MIDI Binding or widget to Trigger Widget->Press. You may want to hide the dial itself on another page.

Resetting the dial. Use the Trigger Widget action to set the action to select the first step.

Using Dials As Toggles

Stepped Dials are often more useful for toggling than button widgets because dials can be set to specific values (with or without triggering them) and can be re-triggered to send their current values. To set up a dial as a toggle:

• Set the dial to have two steps.
• Set the dial's press action to nudge the dial by 1. To set up nudging, set the Trigger Widget action's Action to Scroll. Set the Adjustment to Nudge. Set the Adjustment to 1.
• Turn the Wrap Around option on.
• Tapping the dial will now toggle between the two steps.

Using a Button to Toggle a Dial

Button set up to toggle a dial between two steps

If you prefer a button interface, you can set up a button widget to trigger the dial. To do this, use the Trigger Widget action. Target the dial. Set the action to Scroll. Set the Adjustment to Toggle Value.

See Also

• Context-Sensitive Actions Using Follow Actions and a Stepped Dial
• Sequencing Triggered Actions
• Dial Sequencer Examples