Ansible Development and Beta Firmware Discussion

ludvista29 · 2019-07-21T18:16:13.976Z

Thats what I thought and yes, no rests on the instance I was having troubles with. I’ll see if there is any delay happening somewhere else, currently my latency is super low since I’m using a UA Apollo interface to send clock out. I’ll do some more testing.

Thanks for the response! Enjoying earthsea, and I appreciate all of the work you and @csboling have done for the 2.0 firmware

Cobrah · 2019-07-25T00:23:19.938Z

csboling:

In any grid app, press the preset key. In the center of the third column over, there are enable toggles for I2C followers. Pressing any of these will enter leader mode and Ansible will no longer be able to receive Teletype I2C messages. From top to bottom the default followers are: Just Friends, first TXo, second TXo, ER-301. Disabling all followers will exit leader mode and return to follower mode. This setting is saved to flash and loaded on startup.

I just got a powered backpack in today and went to start setting up some devices to communicate via i2c. I go to the preset page and all I see is the uppermost left tile lit indicating which preset I’m in, and nothing in the 3rd column as described in the quote. I reinstalled ansible 2.0 just to make sure everything was right on that end, and I’m still not having any luck.

csboling · 2019-07-25T00:27:48.387Z

This feature (I2C leader mode) was not part of the Ansible 2.0 release, to try it out you will need the beta build (currently 78d49d8) from the top post in this thread. I have some confidence that this works with TXo and ER-301, but I don’t know yet whether Just Friends works correctly or not.

Cobrah · 2019-07-25T00:41:36.629Z

Ahhhhh, makes sense. Thanks for the quick reply, i’m about to test out that beta then

kbit · 2019-07-27T14:24:22.157Z

Just realized I never followed up on this after my first failed attempt. I was unable to get this working properly. Triggers from the trigger page are being received, the duration page seems to be working for volume, but no CV values are being received.

Also, I think there is a zero index discrepancy because track 1 is triggering all voices, with track 2 triggering voice 1, track 3 triggering voice 2, and track 4 is triggering voice 3. Just Friends is supposed to fire all channels when an i2c command is addressed to channel 0, so this probably has to be shifted.

Picture of the follower setting page for reference:

IMG_20190727_100916363~2.jpg4032×3024 2.22 MB

rklem · 2019-07-30T22:51:56.910Z

I just noticed that when there’s just one note on the first step of a pattern, and you start Kria exactly on this first step (or use external clock and reset), this note is significantly longer than every following repetition. Is this a bug (latest beta)?

csboling · 2019-07-31T02:25:29.203Z

I’m not sure I’m following this right, can you spell out your clock/reset patch for me? By “start Kria” you mean like start the clock running when the playhead is on the first trigger step? A JSON preset backup file would also be great.

EqualTemperament · 2019-07-31T16:19:24.896Z

This may be technically impossible, hard to build, etc - I have no idea. But thought I’d throw it out there as an idea anyway.

For ER-301 and Ansible, I think I’ll always be a little torn putting Ansible into i2c leader mode since Ansible will no longer respond to TT i2c commands anymore. I have a tendency to use Teletype for for clocking, syncing etc.

Is it possible to have a device (Ansible) play a little of both leader and follower roles? One thing i think would be really awesome with the ER-301 is to have a 4th alt parameter that sends a message over i2c to a configurable port, while the rest is done over patch cables.

So there’s no alt param for duration right now. The dream is that it’s alt param could be just a generic CV that you could use for whatever (filter cutoff, amp env amount, etc.) per step, and that particular param is sent as an i2c message - doesn’t affect the analog outs. The rest of the existing params continue to be voltage/patch cables, and Ansible still follows TT i2c commands.

Anyway, just a random dream I thought I’d throw out to see if it has any merit whatsoever.

scanner_darkly · 2019-07-31T17:01:01.770Z

the existing implementation doesn’t support a device being both a leader and a follower, or having multiple leaders on the same bus unfortunately.

EqualTemperament · 2019-07-31T17:07:01.354Z

Bummer. I thought that might be the case, but nice to know for sure.

csboling · 2019-07-31T17:28:58.195Z

scanner_darkly:

having multiple leaders on the same bus

This seems to work pretty well in practice with no additional configuration. I put Ansible in leader mode playing TXo and then proceed to modify TXo parameters from TT scripts. I’m not sure if this degrades bus stability or doesn’t work as well when you have more stuff/different followers on the bus, but the only times I’ve seen crashes have been at absurdly high clock rates for testing. Since implementing follower mode on Ansible I’ve been doing this all the time, it’s great fun.

rklem · 2019-07-31T17:30:24.008Z

csboling:

I’m not sure I’m following this right, can you spell out your clock/reset patch for me? By “start Kria” you mean like start the clock running when the playhead is on the first trigger step? A JSON preset backup file would also be great.

Yes, I think you got it right. One out of PAM’s is sending the clock, another out a reset pulse. When I start PAM’s, the first time the first step is played it’s way too long. I’ll PM you the JSON file…

scanner_darkly · 2019-07-31T17:58:26.456Z

i’ve tried a multi leader set up with various configurations, and in some cases it seemed to work fine (this was polyes and teletype both in leader modes with a txo and just friends as followers) but in some cases it would cause i2c to lock (iirc teletype + polyes in leader modes + 4x txos and er-301 - i should add don’t read too much into the list of modules, it could have something to do with pullup values / cable length etc etc)

Gexex · 2019-07-31T21:01:19.412Z

I think I may have encountered the same issue without anything patched to reset (also using PNW and latest beta firmware).

Not quite certain how to describe the patch. I was running a sequence and stopped it. While stopped, I selected another pattern (without holding the pattern button) and restarted the clock.

The pattern switched and the first note was sustained for longer than expected. This did not occur again the next time the note was triggered.

Not sure if this is the same issue.

EqualTemperament · 2019-07-31T21:06:43.292Z

Hope it’s OK if I keep dreaming around this idea. I’m basically looking for the equivalent of MIDI velocity here. It would add a whole new dimension of realism (or possibly surrealism if you prefer) to kria. If you pluck a guitar string hard, it’s going to not only be louder, but also have a brighter attack than if you pluck it softly. Same is true for striking a piano key, blown instruments, drum strikes, etc. You can’t really achieve this with kria alone (really, this is true of many step sequencers that don’t have a second CV out for each track).

So how about a 4th alt param for gate voltage? It could be fairly coarse (1v, 2v, 3v, 4v, 5v) and still have a pretty big impact, I think. You’d probably want to default to max voltage for backward compatibility and for devices that have a high minimum gate/trigger voltage. But for devices that can trigger on a fairly low gate voltage, you could route a copy of that gate signal to an amp and/or filter envelope VCA, and put a very short 100% wet delay on the gate signal itself. Basically adding some velocity control simulation to the sequence. You could use this for traditional things (amp & filter env amount), or something more creative.

What do you think? Is it even possible or are the Ansible gate out voltages written in stone by the hardware? If it’s possible, is this desirable? I think it would be super cool, obviously haha.

csboling · 2019-07-31T21:21:53.622Z

EqualTemperament:

are the Ansible gate out voltages written in stone by the hardware

Yes, these are just GPIO pins on the microcontroller that you can toggle on or off.

EqualTemperament · 2019-07-31T21:27:16.760Z

Foiled again!

rklem · 2019-07-31T21:56:57.899Z

Gexex:

I think I may have encountered the same issue without anything patched to reset (also using PNW and latest beta firmware).

Not quite certain how to describe the patch. I was running a sequence and stopped it. While stopped, I selected another pattern (without holding the pattern button) and restarted the clock.

The pattern switched and the first note was sustained for longer than expected. This did not occur again the next time the note was triggered.

Not sure if this is the same issue.

Yes, sounds exactly like the same issue. It occurs with or without reset – when the pattern starts on the first note.

rklem · 2019-07-31T22:02:00.829Z

EqualTemperament:

You can’t really achieve this with kria alone (really, this is true of many step sequencers that don’t have a second CV out for each track).

Well, you can, you just have to sacrifice another channel for CV. I’m doing this quite often: CH 1 for pitch, CH 2 (or more) for CV modulation.

EqualTemperament · 2019-07-31T22:03:39.762Z

How about… a 4th kria alt param that does nothing except store values. And a Teletype op to read and optionally set the values. I know you can already pair Teletype with kria and use Teletype’s pattern storage. But a 4th alt param in kria would be able to have its own loop points, time division, stay easily synced if desired (or go out phase) etc. And could save a Teletype pattern for something else.

So teletype could read this value at the current (or other) position, transform it if desired, send it somewhere else over i2c or one of its analog outs.

Hope I’m not coming off as demanding or anything so please don’t take it that way - just seem to be having a pie in the sky idea day.