Wish: Please Change the Following Ring Light Behaviors

A

atquinn

Power User
All Increment/Decrement Switches (Bank, Preset, Scene, etc...)
The current behavior is: The LED ring is bright when the switch is active, otherwise dim
This doesn't make sense. In practice this means for something like Bank up or down I only ever see a dim yellow ring. When I press on the ring it lights up while I am pressing it, but of course since my foot is on it, I can't see it lighting up.
It would be more useful if the ring light was just always on. Then it would be easy to see it is a switch that is available for use.

Layout Switch
The current behavior is: The LED ring is bright if the designated Layout is currently loaded, otherwise dim
Again, this doesn't make sense. I would never program a layout switch to take me to the layout I was currently in. So again, the ring light is always dim.
It would be more useful if the ring light was just always on. Then it would be easy to see it is a switch that is available for use.

Austin
 
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we can all have our own opinions. i'd like to present mine in reference to this topic.

i disagree that a "Bright" light indicates "available for use." that doesn't correlate to me at all.

Dim typically means off - which to me is more of an indication of "available to use" or "engage."


perhaps you can just increase the "Dim" setting, so it's brighter.
 
chris said:
we can all have our own opinions. i'd like to present mine in reference to this topic.

i disagree that a "Bright" light indicates "available for use." that doesn't correlate to me at all.

Dim typically means off - which to me is more of an indication of "available to use" or "engage."


perhaps you can just increase the "Dim" setting, so it's brighter.
Click to expand...

With buttons like bank up/down and layout buttons their state is always the same unless they are being pressed.
What I like is an easy way to distinguish them from other buttons. Fortunately the FC12 has all sorts of different colors available so I can easily set them to their own colors. Unfortunately, for me, I like my dim setting very dim (as dim as possible), so having them dim makes them not very useful visually

I'm happy if everyone gets it their way though. For instance, the ring light customization per footswitch could be made fully customizable so you could set the color and intensity for on and off states. The current default behavior could be kept but then I could set the on and off states to the exact same thing.

This would allow for all sort of other frivolous settings as well :p
 
I agree with Chris here, but I do see your point, @atquinn .
Given all the customization possible with this thing, I would imagine your requests would be possible, but we shall see.

On a related note, I have a drive pedal built by a friend that has a multi-led and if fades between all the colors. Drives my other guitar friends nuts.

Can we have a setting to have the rings fade between all the colors? Spin in circles? can each 1/4th of the ring have it's own color?

(yes i know these make no sense but I am seriously curious now...)
 
lqdsnddist said:
Would be cool if they could "spin",,,,

Be even cooler if they could spin at the rate of an effect.... how cool to have your spinning LED's speed up and slow down with slow/fast univibe or rotary speaker effect right ?
Click to expand...

Impossible due to the design. You might be able to get them to "throb" between two different colors to different tempos though? I imagine they'll be working on more important items though :p
 
I agree with Chris.

To elaborate further:
LED Off == Unavailable for use/No function assigned to switch
LED Dim == Item not enabled (effect) or selected (preset/scene), available for use
LED Bright == item is enabled or selected

While I do not have an FC... at least not yet, I envision assigning a specific color to a specific function. Like red buttons are for effects, blue buttons are for presets, etc then using the LEDs to indicate which what is available or enabled/selected.

Using the lights in this way coupled with the scribble strips (and perhaps some home grown magnifier strips for the benefit of my 50+ y.o. eyes) would provide a very intuitive ground controller solution IMO.
 
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Capt Nasty said:
I agree with Chris.

To elaborate further:
LED Off == Unavailable for use/No function assigned to switch
LED Dim == Item not enabled (effect) or selected (preset/scene), available for use
LED Bright == item is enabled or selected

While I do not have an FC... at least not yet, I envision assigning a specific color to a specific function. Like red buttons are for effects, blue buttons are for presets, etc then using the LEDs to indicate which what is available or enabled/selected.

Using the lights in this way coupled with the scribble strips (and perhaps some home grown magnifier strips for the benefit of my 50+ y.o. eyes) would provide a very intuitive ground controller solution IMO.
Click to expand...
you've pretty much described exactly how it was designed and works.
 
Capt Nasty said:
I agree with Chris.

To elaborate further:
LED Off == Unavailable for use/No function assigned to switch
LED Dim == Item not enabled (effect) or selected (preset/scene), available for use
LED Bright == item is enabled or selected

While I do not have an FC... at least not yet, I envision assigning a specific color to a specific function. Like red buttons are for effects, blue buttons are for presets, etc then using the LEDs to indicate which what is available or enabled/selected.

Using the lights in this way coupled with the scribble strips (and perhaps some home grown magnifier strips for the benefit of my 50+ y.o. eyes) would provide a very intuitive ground controller solution IMO.
Click to expand...

I guess it's that I'm used to RJM's GT controllers? Yek's video here shows more what I'd like to see. In this video the UP and Down displays are nice and bright (not in a dim, inactive state) and it's easy to see that they are available. Now, in this case, the colors are integrated with the displays so it's a little bit different, but I like to have all my "utility" buttons bright all the time. Their color will indicate that they are not "function" buttons so there will be no chance of confusion because that color will not be used any place else and they brightness will make them easy to pick out.



This video shows something else useful, which is being able to set different colors for off on states. If, for example, your inactive presets are red and your active preset it green, it makes it much easier to distinguish the active preset at a glance (unless you're color blind :p). Not that I'm requesting that functionality.

Austin
 
@atquinn,

I too have an RJM GT/MM22. What you are showing is just one way to configure the RJM. I have my MM/GT22 setup the way I described earlier. But with that said, I think the lights are a completely different beast on the FC than the RJM

The lights for color coding on the RJM are integrated into the scribble strips. On the FC the scribble strips and the colored lights are distinct and separate.

On the RJM the brightness of the scribble strips conveys context and also improves scribble strip visibility. On the FC, the brightness of the colored LEDs convey context but do not affect scribble strip visibility.

As a result, on the FC I think a consistent, ternary contextual convention (not available/not enabled/enabled) is more intuitive as it would require less conscious effort to interpret and use. In your use case, what a color or brightness levels means is inconsistent from button type to button type and requires a higher level of thought and decision making to use (while you are presumably also thinking about what you are playing, queues you have to hit, etc). Such additional complexity lowers the usability and increases the likelihood that the player will make a mistake. I personally prefer as much consistency as possible in order to minimize the decisions necessary to run the ground controller.

As for using color to indicate engagement state of a given function, again I say consistency is the key. If the notion is that a dim red signifies say an effect button but a bright red signifies any enabled feature, this IMO would be confusing and more difficult to use. In that case brightness changes what a color means. This requires time and thought to interpret what your board is telling you and would IMO increase the risk of selecting the wrong thing, mis-timing a transition, missing a queue, or making a mistake in what you are playing.

I am not saying this convention does not work for you. It obviously does. I think the simpler, more straightforward ternary convention the FC has delivered out of the gate is a safer bet for mass consumption.

If Cliff wants to provide flexibility to the player and support both configurations that would be great. If it is an either/or proposition, then I think that the way it currently functions is more intuitive.

tl;dr - In my opinion simplicity and consistency are the key, but if Cliff chooses to add options allowing us to specify which behaviors we want to use, I think that is a good thing too.
 
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