External Switch Problems/Wishes

T

Twister

Member
I was planning to use external switches for some global (to me) functions in order save button real estate on the controller itself. Having received my FC-6 (yay!), I find that none of my planned uses will work, so here's a bit of a wish list.

1 - Ability to scroll through layouts with external switches (brought up by others in the forum as well). It would save me real estate and/or the tap dancing of the MLM.

2 - Tuner - so far as I can tell, the only inputs the tuner will take to activate it are MIDI commands.

3 - Tap Tempo - while I can set this to take external switch input from the FC it appears to be expecting a latching switch, and is taking both the transition to on and the transition to off as tempo inputs, yielding very strange results if you tap tempo into it in the normal/intuitive way with a momentary switch.

It seems like for all of these an intermediate definition layer for the external switches would be handy. The user would be able to specify whether the connected switch was momentary or latching, and whether the Axe-III sees it as momentary or latching (translating as necessary).

I'm looking at four useless momentary switches right now, so hoping maybe this is something that can be rolled into a near term firmware update. Will make do until then...
 
Twister said:
I was planning to use external switches for some global (to me) functions in order save button real estate on the controller itself. Having received my FC-6 (yay!), I find that none of my planned uses will work, so here's a bit of a wish list.

1 - Ability to scroll through layouts with external switches (brought up by others in the forum as well). It would save me real estate and/or the tap dancing of the MLM.

2 - Tuner - so far as I can tell, the only inputs the tuner will take to activate it are MIDI commands.

3 - Tap Tempo - while I can set this to take external switch input from the FC it appears to be expecting a latching switch, and is taking both the transition to on and the transition to off as tempo inputs, yielding very strange results if you tap tempo into it in the normal/intuitive way with a momentary switch.

It seems like for all of these an intermediate definition layer for the external switches would be handy. The user would be able to specify whether the connected switch was momentary or latching, and whether the Axe-III sees it as momentary or latching (translating as necessary).

I'm looking at four useless momentary switches right now, so hoping maybe this is something that can be rolled into a near term firmware update. Will make do until then...
Click to expand...
This would be useful.
 
Twister said:
I was planning to use external switches for some global (to me) functions in order save button real estate on the controller itself. Having received my FC-6 (yay!), I find that none of my planned uses will work, so here's a bit of a wish list.

1 - Ability to scroll through layouts with external switches (brought up by others in the forum as well). It would save me real estate and/or the tap dancing of the MLM.

2 - Tuner - so far as I can tell, the only inputs the tuner will take to activate it are MIDI commands.

3 - Tap Tempo - while I can set this to take external switch input from the FC it appears to be expecting a latching switch, and is taking both the transition to on and the transition to off as tempo inputs, yielding very strange results if you tap tempo into it in the normal/intuitive way with a momentary switch.

It seems like for all of these an intermediate definition layer for the external switches would be handy. The user would be able to specify whether the connected switch was momentary or latching, and whether the Axe-III sees it as momentary or latching (translating as necessary).

I'm looking at four useless momentary switches right now, so hoping maybe this is something that can be rolled into a near term firmware update. Will make do until then...
Click to expand...
I'm pretty sure you just summarized 3-4 existing wishes! ;)

But I am onboard with all of them. As I stated in a related wish, I think all items in the Midi/Remote menu Utility page should be assignable to an external switch.
 
I don't believe anyone's brought up the tap tempo double trigger issue before, or the idea of a compatibility layer so that no matter what kind switch you have and what kind of input you need you're good to go. The other two came along for the ride because they're part of the picture.
 
Twister said:
I don't believe anyone's brought up the tap tempo double trigger issue before, or the idea of a compatibility layer so that no matter what kind switch you have and what kind of input you need you're good to go. The other two came along for the ride because they're part of the picture.
Click to expand...
Can you please expand on your comments?

What is tap tempo double trigger issue?

What do mean by "no matter what kind of switch"? The FC supports latching and momentary. What other types do you mean?

What do you mean "no matter what kind of input"? The FC has physical TRS jacks. That means it can support only TRS or TS as input.
 
To elaborate on my original post...

You can choose an external switch from an FC for tap tempo input, but tap tempo expects a latching switch and counts both the transition to on and the transition to off as tempo inputs (each of these is a physical foot tap). When you use a momentary switch the AFX is setting tempo based on the timing of when you tap the switch and when you release it, and setting silly tempos in the process.

You can't choose an external switch at all for activating the tuner, but if you could you would run into the same but opposite problem. You want a latching input to the tuner, but in my case I have two momentary switches in one stomp box that I would like to use to control tap and tune.

The solution I'm proposing is an abstraction layer for external switches. You would tell it what kind of physical switch was attached, latching or momentary, and tell it what kind of "switch" you wanted the input connected to it to see. If you had a momentary switch but wanted a latching input, you would track the physical switch-on transitions and toggle the "switch" on and off with each transition. If you had a latching switch but wanted a momentary input, you would have the "switch" send a switch-on signal for both switch-on and switch-off transitions in the physical switch, then add a switch-off transition in software so that the "switch" is behaving like a real momentary switch.

That abstraction layer would be very lightweight code-wise, and would solve a problem I'm sure many of us have. We have some number of switches lying around that we'd like to hook up to our FC, but the physical switches we have might not match well with the inputs we need the AFX to see. The abstraction layer would solve all of that.
 
Twister said:
To elaborate on my original post...

You can choose an external switch from an FC for tap tempo input, but tap tempo expects a latching switch and counts both the transition to on and the transition to off as tempo inputs (each of these is a physical foot tap). When you use a momentary switch the AFX is setting tempo based on the timing of when you tap the switch and when you release it, and setting silly tempos in the process.

You can't choose an external switch at all for activating the tuner, but if you could you would run into the same but opposite problem. You want a latching input to the tuner, but in my case I have two momentary switches in one stomp box that I would like to use to control tap and tune.

The solution I'm proposing is an abstraction layer for external switches. You would tell it what kind of physical switch was attached, latching or momentary, and tell it what kind of "switch" you wanted the input connected to it to see. If you had a momentary switch but wanted a latching input, you would track the physical switch-on transitions and toggle the "switch" on and off with each transition. If you had a latching switch but wanted a momentary input, you would have the "switch" send a switch-on signal for both switch-on and switch-off transitions in the physical switch, then add a switch-off transition in software so that the "switch" is behaving like a real momentary switch.

That abstraction layer would be very lightweight code-wise, and would solve a problem I'm sure many of us have. We have some number of switches lying around that we'd like to hook up to our FC, but the physical switches we have might not match well with the inputs we need the AFX to see. The abstraction layer would solve all of that.
Click to expand...
Got it. Makes sense... Since I have the FC-12, I haven't yet needed an external switch so haven't experienced these issues.
 
Agree here about the latching switches. Just got my FC-12 and am trying to set things up the way I had them with the MFC. I have a couple of external Mission switches that are apparently momentary (I'd forgotten that, since they'd been configured to work as latching with the MFC for years).

I like to keep my solo volume boost off to the side on an external switch so I don't accidentally hit it when engaging scenes, effects, etc. While it's not a big deal to replace it with a latching switch, it would be nice to get the option back to treat the switch as latching.
 
Twister said:
You can choose an external switch from an FC for tap tempo input, but tap tempo expects a latching switch and counts both the transition to on and the transition to off as tempo inputs (each of these is a physical foot tap). When you use a momentary switch the AFX is setting tempo based on the timing of when you tap the switch and when you release it, and setting silly tempos in the process.
Click to expand...
It expects latching for tap tempo? Really? I'll have to double check this tonight. I've not done much with external switches any my FC-6 yet as the need hasn't arisen. If this is true, it feels like a bug or big oversight to me. Latching for tap tempo would be very, very awkward.
 
It's not that non-standard, it's pretty common for tap-tempo applications in a lot of guitar pedals. In an SPST switch there's aren't any terminals to swap, you'd have to build a circuit to reverse the voltage.
 
Kamil Kisiel said:
It's not that non-standard, it's pretty common for tap-tempo applications in a lot of guitar pedals.
Click to expand...
What pedals spec normally closed non-latching switches? This statement is entirely contrary to my years of experience.

Edit: Boss. The FS5U is normally closed apparently. TIL. All MIDI pedals I’ve worked with since the early Rocktron stuff have been normally open.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom