nanoKontrol with Tempo LEDs

[Dave_C]

Hello everyone. I have been playing with Brad’s new Tempo LEDs and have managed to make a working prototype for my nanoKontrol. Thank-you @Brad for giving us Tempo LEDs. I understand the original intent was to use this with microcontrollers, but thought this would be useful information and insight to what is currently required to make it work with a nanoKontrol or similar controller that uses CC data to trigger LEDs. It just goes to show you that Cantabile is so versatile and can adapt to all kinds to situations.
Be warned, this is a long post and does get a bit convoluted at times.

1. Here are the LED’s I decided to use on my nanoKontrol. The CC values are factory default. I did change the MIDI send/receive channel to 12 for my setup.
   

   

2. Next up was to create a MIDI output port for the nanoKontrol
   

   

3. Now the head scratching part.
   I had to figure out the tempo binary bit structure.

From Brads LED blog;
Bits 0-3 contain the current beat number
Bits 4-6 contain the current time signature numerator minus 2
Knowing this I could make a binary bit table for time signature & beat number and convert to decimal. I used these decimal values in the output bindings to control the nanoKontrol LEDs On/Off sequence.

2/4 beat 1 = 0000000 = 0
2/4 beat 2 = 0000001 = 1
3/4 beat 1 = 0010000 = 16
3/4 beat 2 = 0010001 = 17
3/4 beat 3 = 0010010 = 18
4/4 beat 1 = 0100000 = 32
4/4 beat 2 = 0100001 = 33
4/4 beat 3 = 0100010 = 34
4/4 beat 4 = 0100011 = 35
6/8 beat 1 = 1000000 = 64
6/8 beat 2 = 1000001 = 65
6/8 beat 3 = 1000010 = 66
6/8 beat 4 = 1000011 = 67
6/8 beat 5 = 1000100 = 68
6/8 beat 6 = 1000101 = 69

4. Now the states and bindings to turn the LEDs on & off. I used states to switch the time signature. Each state enables or disables its corresponding bindings. The decimal values calculated previously are now used here in the value mapping.
   

   

5. Lastly I created initialization bindings for the LED’s after state changes & transport stops. This is to make sure no LEDs are stuck on.
   

   

Hope this helps @richmn and other community members

Dave.

[brad]

@Dave_C - Very cool! Thanks for sharing.

[FredProgGH]

Sweeeeeet!

[dsteinschneider]

Hi Dave,

I’m going to try setting this up with my NanoKontrol. I’ll report back how I make out.

EDIT - just saw Brad simplified this further!

Doug

[Dave_C]

Eh Doug

Ya, Brad just added beat and measure flash control today in build 3682. Its much more simplified and works well on my nanoKontrol. I implemented the measure flash on one the nanoKontrol transport buttons. This allows me to keep an eye on the 1st beat of every bar in quiet moments.

Dave.

[Kjeldran]

Is there a way to set the flashing on a single button with current 3683? I tried with no avail.

[dave_dore]

Hi Kjeldran,

Can you show your binding(s) you tried?

This binding worked on a simple test on 3683, it flashes a control bar button.

Dave