Feature Request - MIDI send commands

[Matt]

Hi Rory Jaffe,

The older feature request topic has gone cold but I would like to revive parts of that topic.

A lot of the initial 15 requests in your post are related to sending commands back to the MIDI controller. Is there a way that this can be done by the user per command

For example here on the same line as CC: 72 after the LR Command column another column with TX MIDI command? Possible a checkbox to enable the sending of the command?

That way users can enter in the command they want; such as 'CH 11 ON 0 1' to turn on the first button in the top row Layer A on the X-Touch Mini? Perhaps even allowing a sequence of commands?  

The scenario I'm thinking of here would be to have a button light up for a given profile that you're in then when you select another profile that button lights up and the other one turns off.

Cheers,

Matt 

[Ernst Bokkelkamp]

Extremely bad idea, this will cause lots of problems.

When you dig into the workings of the X-Touch Mini you should see that the state of a button is held in an internal memory that can be swapped with the layer buttons (that do not send messages), the internal state of a button can be updated using MIDI messages but only in the active layer (is a bug) and the midi message send by pressing a button depends on the button configuration and the state of the internal memory. At the moment when you press a button it toggles sending value 127 followed by value 0, when internal memory states that the button is "ON" (=127) then pressing the button will NOT send the value 127 but only the value 0 which can not been handled by MIDI2LR 

I think it would be possible to reserve a few buttons to be used as indicators, but this would only be usable in one layer because the other layer is not reachable and which the active layer is can not be queried.

The source code is available, you could give it a try yourself.

[Matt]

Interesting point of view Ernst, 

I'm currently sitting here with my X-Touch Mini sending MIDI commands to it via SendMIDI. As per the user manual, I can turn on a button LED or make it flash, or do the same with the ring LEDs. If I send the command to turn on a Layer B LED while in Layer A it does indeed turn the LED for the button on Layer A, but if I switch to Layer B and then back to Layer A the LED is still on.

A workaround is to send the command to turn on the LED, change layer, turn on the LED, then change back to the first layer. This, of course, assumes you start on Layer A, but give this a go and tell if it behaves the same way on your XT Mini? I'm using SendMIDI -  https://github.com/gbevin/SendMIDI to send commands.

CH 11 ON 8 1 PC 1 ON 8 1 PC 0

You'll be surprised how quickly the layer can change.

Cheers,

Matt

[Ernst Bokkelkamp]

I have been thinking about this a few months already and I have not found a solution.

One problem is that the layer buttons do not send messages and for this reason it cannot be determined which layer is active.

At the moment I do not have time to look further into this.

[Matt]

You can use the slider to change layers, but you would need MIDI2LR to send back the PC command and have this in all profiles. Not elegant but it would work.

Having the ability for MIDI2LR to send user configurable MIDI commands back to whatever control surface you're using goes beyond just the XT Mini as other control surfaces don't have layers/send layer change messages. Being able to send colour messages to control surfaces that have the function would be better than having coloured dots stuck to control knobs.

I'll probably have a look at the code sometime this week, but it is a steep learning curve as the last time I programmed, it was Turbo Pascal :)  

[Tjeerd Paul Jacobs]

Not sure if this will help you but you can use keyboard maestro to determine lightroom state based on front window title or the marked state of a menu item. Then have Keyboard Maestro send midi to the Xtouch accordingly.

[Sven Riebeling]

Is there any similar app like Keyboard Maestro for Windows Users? I'm using Windows 10...

[Tjeerd Paul Jacobs]

I've creates an exact setup like this for turning on xtouch LEDs this way using Controllermate.
Just for handling the LED Behaviour.
So a single button will send to Controllermate for LED toggling and to Midi2Lr for selecting a tool or profile.
This works when you only use the controller as input device.
You could also go a step further using keyboard maestro to determin the lightroom state and send this to controllermate to always have the leds in a proper state
Keyboard Maestro can determin Lightroom state by front window title, or a marked or unmarked menu item.
Or even a screenshot of the interface.
You can use these to update Controllermate what the current state is to keep the LEDs be in the right state.
Its not easy but it can work.