I am trying to understand the expected behavior of an MC8 Pro Preset with respect to its state management and action firing. Let’s assume I have turned on “Remember Toggle States” and that I am using Toggle mode in all my Presets to switch between Pos 1 and Pos 2.
A couple of questions:
Do presets default to Pos 1 at power up? If so, are Pos 1 actions fired at power up?
If I trigger a “Set Toggle Engage” action (via another preset or incoming MIDI CC) for a preset when that preset is already in Pos 2, will it again fire the Pos 2 actions? Or will it recognize that it is already in Pos 2 and do nothing?
Same question for a “Set Toggle Disengage” action for a preset that is already in Pos 1.
[EDIT: I subsequently learned about “On First Engage” actions. If I do not want an action re-fired when receiving a “Set Toggle Engage” when already in Pos 2, would I just use “On First Engage” for those actions?]
Yes they do default to pos 1. No messages are send unless you programm a bank message to do so.
Set toggle doesn’t trigger any messages. It just does what it says, it sets the position of the preset. If you want to send the messages use ‘engage preset’ (will toggle the preset) or ‘trigger message’ (won’t toggle the preset).
A set toggle message will be ignored if the preset is already in the state you’ve requested.
Thank you so much for your response, @GuitarWolf. Here is some more detail of my scenario and a couple follow up questions to help me understand how this works. (MC8 Pro is on the way so I can’t experiment yet!)
In my specific case, I want to set up preset A to control the on/off state of a RevivalDrive effect pedal using a momentary pulse on the tip of the relay port. The power on state of the RevivalDrive is “on”. Every time it receives a momentary pulse on the tip, it will flip the on/off state. My thinking is to use Toggle Mode for preset A with a relay port momentary pulse action for both Pos 1 and Pos 2. Since the pedal is “on” when powered up and the preset defaults to Pos 1 on power up, then Pos 1 would be the “pedal on” state and Pos 2 would be the “pedal off” state. Toggling between them would send a pulse which would flip the state in sync. So far so good?
Now, the tricky part (for me):
From preset B, I would like to ensure the RevivalDrive is on. What message sequence do I use?
From preset C, I would like to ensure the RevivalDrive is off. What message sequence do I use?
In order for the external pedal to remain in sync with the controller, if preset A is already in Pos 1 (“pedal on”), I don’t want it to send a relay port pulse again if my intent is for the pedal to be on. Same goes for Pos 2 if my intent is for the pedal to be off.
Currently I use an RJM PBC to do this using its Function Switch capability. The PBC manages the state of the switch such that a pulse is sent only when changing the Function Switch state from on to off or from off to on. It does not send any pulse when going on to on or off to off. Just trying to see how I can accomplish the same thing using the MC8 Pro.
Preset A to toggle your pedal on/off, while keeping the positions in sync with the pedal’s current status to get visual feedback. The message for ‘pedal off’ is the same exact message than the message for ‘pedal on’.
Preset B always engages the pedal, but doesn’t change positions.
Preset C always dis-engages the pedal, but doesn’t change positions.
Since there isn’t a straight forward way to ‘check’ for the position of a preset, you’d have to build something that does this for you.
One way to do this would be to programm additional messages to preset A paired with different action types.
For example:
Your Preset A is programmed to send a pulse and toggle the preset on ‘release’.
Add a message to send a pulse on ‘long press’ in position 1.
Add a message to send a pulse on ‘double tap’ in position 2.
Position 1 is the ‘on’ state.
Programm a message with ‘engage preset/Preset A/long press’ to Preset C (to disengage the pedal)
Position 2 is the ‘off’ state. Programm a message with ‘engage preset/Preset A/double tap’ to Preset B (to engage the pedal)
‘Engage preset’ will trigger preset A remotely.
Preset B can only do so if preset A is in pos 2.
Preset C can only do so if preset A is in pos 1.
Question about pedal state if on or off. If I have a song with three different scenes and my display has scene 1-4 on buttons abcd, and I have the top row efgh to show me my pedals ( bb, zen,boost,h90) how to I have them show if they are on or off when I change from verse to chorus? Hope that makes sense
Assuming you have a MIDI loop switcher to turn on or off your non-MIDI pedals …. this is fairly straightforward to do, but it does require some programming.
First, for each of your pedal buttons abcd:
Program a LongPress action in Pos 1 ONLY to turn on the pedal and toggle the preset to Pos 2. You will trigger this action from a scene preset when you want this pedal ON for that scene.
Program a DoubleTap action in Pos 2 ONLY to turn off the pedal and toggle the preset back to Pos 1. You will trigger this action from a scene preset when you want this pedal OFF for that scene.
Program a Release action in Pos 1 to turn on the pedal/toggle the preset and a Release action in Pos 2 to turn off the pedal/toggle the preset. You can use this to change the state of the pedal on demand by pressing one of your abcd buttons.
Second, program your scene presets and control the state of each abcd pedal preset by triggering an EngagePreset for each of the abcd pedal presets using either a LongPress or DoubleTap action depending if you want that pedal on or off.
Now, you can select a scene button and it will set the desired state of each of your abcd pedal buttons. You can also press an abcd button manually to turn its pedal on or off.
Ok, I’m trying to wrap my brain with all of this. I think I follow what you’re saying but let me layout again. I have an MC8pro. Let’s say the bottom row are scenes and the to row are pedals that are connected to the ml5. So when I bring up a song the bottom row are the scenes and top pedals. What I want to happen is when I press scene 1 that what ever pedals are being used in that scene will reflect that they are engaged. When I change to scene 2 then those pedals that are engaged will reflect and the ones that are off also will reflect their state. Lastly if while I’m in a particular scene if I chose to engage or disengage I can hit the appropriate pedal. Since each scene and pedal has their own button do I have to program double taps and on release messages?
Per my message above, you need to program three messages (Release, Double Tap, and Long Press) for each of the “pedal” buttons. The scene buttons just need a single Release action. The reason the pedal buttons need more programming is because they need to be triggered both by manually pressing the button and also indirectly through the scenes.
The release actions are there to toggle the preset when stepping on the footswitch for said preset.
The long press and double tap actions are there to trigger those presets remotely by your scene presets.
To set up a scene you’ll have to programm an ‘engage preset/long press’ or ‘engage preset/double tap’ for each of your presets in the top row.
Those engage preset messages will exclusively trigger messages with actions they are programmed with.
For example an engage preset message with ‘press’ will only trigger ‘press’ messages but no ‘release’, while an actual press of the footswitch would trigger both.
Since you use long press in position 1 and double tap in position 2 an ‘engage preset/long press’ will make sure that the target preset will be engaged no matter what state it was previously in. That is the whole point of this approach.
The latest firmware update has a new feature ‘multi engage/bypass’
This could streamline the whole thing a lot. But that would be a completely different way to set this up. You still might want to look into this.
