Monitor the status of Leslie

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#1

Hi all.
Some time ago I was intrigued by a post about the possibility of highlighting the status of the Leslie on the monitor.
@UK had posed the question because during a concert could happen to not know if the leslie was in Slow or Fast, because sometimes the sound monitoring on stage is far from optimal.
Torsten came to his rescue and suggested creating a binding inside the organ rack that would react to the status of the leslie speed parameter in the plug in and send CC127 messages to the onscreen keyboard. Then, to display the leslie status in real time he set up a button in the controller bar, whose display formula was basically this:
$(cc(127) == 127 ? “Fast” : (cc(127) == 64 ? “Stop” : “Slow”))
As I said at the beginning, this intrigued me considerably.
So I thought of something different, such as squares with different colors instead of writing, one for each state, to make everything more “visual” easy to understand.
To do all this I asked for help to the genius of the lamp, a guy who answers to the name of Dave_Dore …
He helped me by explaining how to intervene for a correct formulation of what I was proposing.
It came out nice and very intuitive.
Being a curious guy I thought of something even nicer and different from the usual: emoji.
Clearly there are no emoji that symbolize a Half Moon, so why not try to create them?
Obviously I’m not capable, otherwise I would not even write this post!
So I ask for help here in the Forum, if someone knows how to create emoji that can, even sympathetically, symbolize the Half Moon to be inserted in the Bar Controller instead of or together with the words Slow, Brake and Fast.
Here below, how I set up with Dave a button dedicated to Leslie states in the bar controller.

or

if with B-3X

Any ideas?

Sergio

#2

I do not know how to create special characters to show on the video monitor via the onscreen keyboard output. Those characters appear to be limited to some type of ASCII set (love to see a complete list from someone). However, I started using jpg note backgrounds which can be anything you can draw in an picture editing program. It might be possible to show your desired symbols on the background jpg and cover/uncover them as needed by overwriting boxes the same color as the background. The problem is the symbols won’t be in the same spot.

#3

Hi Easteelreath.
Thanks for the reply. Could you explain better, in detail, on how you would do with jpgs? I ask you because I don’t know and if you can do something with jpgs.
Sergio.

#4

When adding a Show Note, there is a field to add a background image. Typically, I use PowerPoint to make a slide for each song and save as *.jpg. Then, in the Cantabile Show Note creation pane, add that saved *.jpg as a background image. Using the CC values as you are doing to the onscreen keyboard to show different colored states of the Leslie, you could overwrite (hide) portions of the jpg background image. Those type of CC values can be used to conditionally write text values in the Show Notes by entering in the text entry field at the top of the Show Notes creation pane using the same $(…) format. Hardest part may be getting the text to overlay the jpg in the right place.

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#5

As an approach it may be interesting.
I’m kind of at a loss though.
Could you give an example with a file?
I’m asking because I’ve tried, but I can’t insert a jpg where you say to paste it.

#6

Well, you could just take screenshots of some hammond plugin with the half moon in different positions. Then you can select just the part of the screenshot that you need (the part with the halfmoon). You can produce three jpgs: slow, stop and fast.
Finally, you could use a binding to execute a command showing the appropriate image, for a few seconds or forever, depending on the value of the CC. I am not a Windows expert…maybe one needs a short batch script to do that.

Gabriel

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#7

That’s already a step forward.

#8

I was talking about adding the jpg in the “Background Image:” field. Browse to the jgp and that picture will be the background of the entire Show Notes screen.
ShowNotes

#9

I have been able to show a picture for a few seconds using python (which I had already installed on my PC) and a package called OpenCV.

The bindings are as follows:

bindings_show_halfmoon_images
bindings_show_halfmoon_images1452Ă—128 13.7 KB

And the scripts contain these lines:

import cv2
image = cv2.imread("stop_half_moon.png")
cv2.imshow("Window", image)
cv2.waitKey(3000)
cv2.destroyAllWindows()

where the name of the image is the only things that differs. It could be much more elegant (the name of the image file could be passed to the script etc.) but I just wanted to learn how to do it. Maybe the command could be integrated in Cantabile as an external tool. The number passed to waitKey() is the time to wait in milliseconds, before closing the window. If you move the MW back and forth quickly, you could end up with more than one window on the screen at the same time.

To install OpenCV, I just had to do

pip install opencv-python

in a cmd window.

Gabriel

Edit: In the bindings, I did not optimize the CC value range to match them with the plugin. One should make sure that the intervals are the same as understood by the plugin.

#10

Just curious, did OP ever go with a solution?

#11

Something, nothing graphic though.
I’m away from home, I’ll answer you later, so I’ll tell you more.
Sergio

#12

Hi @easteelreath
The various solutions proposed are all interesting, both the simpler ones and the ones a bit complex (for me!!) like python or similar. Therefore I preferred to use a visualization through Emoji, in a button of the Bar Controller.
The Emoji chosen are, in addition to the written Slow, Brake and Fast, simple symbols that indicate the speed: :repeat: (Slow), :pause_button: (Brake), :fast_forward: (Fast).
Then, I adopted a simple but effective system: I called the GSiRotary plugin (if you have VB3 II you have also the Rotary plugin in the package), I set the relative speed associations and I constantly “see” the position of the Leslie running.
Obviously the GSiRotary is only affected by this position, even if you move the GSiRotary stick nothing is affected.
This is a personal visualization of mine, I only need it for this. Rather, if someone uses a tablet and wants to have this visualization he must remember that moving the toggle in touchscreen doesn’t produce any command effect!!!
That’s all, it was a bizarre idea, but… it works for me!!!
Sergio