Stepped Dials

This article covers helpful odds and ends about using Stepped Dials. Much of this information also applies to Radio Buttons.

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.

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