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 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).

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.