Stepped Dials
This article covers helpful odds and ends about using Stepped Dials. Much of this information also applies to Radio Buttons.
Techniques
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
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.
See this video about how to set up nudging:
The technique above applies to Loopy Pro 1.1.x. In Loopy Pro 2.0, there will be direct support for changing dial steps without activating them.
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
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.
