Motorized faders and presets (bome midi translator)

I am trying to make Mackie controller’s (icon platform m+) motorized faders work as default faders on one preset, OR send cc messages on another preset. Both presets work fine individually, and motorized faders work as intended in ableton.
Only problem, when switching between presets faders do not update their position until touched on pc or controller.
Is this a solvable issue or inherent limitation?
Thanks!

Hi, and welcome to the Bome Forum!

Yes, this is achievable. You will need to set up translators to track your current fader positions in global variables within a given preset. Then when switching presets, have the selected preset use the global variables and a repeating timer to iterate through and update your fader positions on your Platform M+.

Steve Caldwell
Bome Customer Care


Also available for paid consulting services: bome@sniz.biz

Hmm, I might need to look for another solution, because when returning from one preset to another, the value in DAW may have already changed.
For example, my CC preset is used to control channel parameters. I might switch from faders preset back to cc preset when a different channel is already selected.
Or maybe I misunderstood your part about using a repeating timer? Can that be used to go back to daw and fetch updated values?

One rough solution I see is to shift banks (set of 8 tracks or parameter banks) left then right, which seems to refreshes all motorized faders. But maybe there is a cleaner way?

When you track your variables for refresh. Track them from your DAW not your controller. If the DAW updates them and you are not in that preset, the variables can still be updated but you don’t refresh you controller faders until you switch to the displaying preset.

So when capturing from your DAW, you are always enabling the capture from everything, but you only pass through to the faders if it is on the currently selected preset. Then when switching presets, you should already have what the DAW sent and be able to update your faders.

Make sense?

Steve Caldwell
Bome Customer Care


Also available for paid consulting services: bome@sniz.biz

Ah thanks, I can make this work.
Say I have 8 faders x 3 presets = 24 global variables to track, what ms delay would you recommend between repeating timers so it is responsive but does not degrade performance?

Hi, most controllers can handle 10ms.

If you are tracking 7 bit values (normal CC) you can actually bit map 4 faders to one global variable if you are running low on global variable space (360 total available).

If you are mapping pitch bend (which Mackie Faders generally do) they are probably 14 bits, but a lot of time they only use the MSB (7 bits). If you need 14 bit accuracy you can map 2 faders to one global variable.

There are notes in “Tips and Tricks” on how to do bitwise manipulation.

Steve Caldwell
Bome Customer Care


Also available for paid consulting services: bome@sniz.biz