Thanks, Brad. I will start over with github and see if I can figure it out.
Hi Brad,
I have made a few baby steps. I think that looking at the Stream Deck SDK was probably a mistake. Itās a completely different toolkit from what you are using. The SDK is all about old-school command line stuff. Not a fan.
I have forked your github repo and cloned it. I have made a trivial change, rebuilt it with pack.bat and saw the results on Stream Deck. FYI, with the latest version of SD you donāt need to manually delete from %APPDATA%. In fact, that does NOT work unless you go into task manager and kill some sort of SD background task first. Uninstall from the SD app, click on the new build to reinstall. But it is not smart enough to reinstall an existing plugin, though.
I suppose I could just start hacking away, build, and see what happens. But that will get pretty tedious with no debug capability.
I get the impression that you use VS Code for development. I installed that and I think I have the project loaded. But I donāt really know how to get started. āRunā wants me to make a selection.
āAttach to Pluginā intuitively makes sense, but the only choice is the āhello-worldā plugin I made with the Stream Deck SDK tutorial.
Run Current File exits with the following messages
I have confidence that I have the project loaded. If I introduce an intentional error, I get the expected error messages.
Let me give you a little of my background as it may inform you as to how you might be able to guide me. I am a primarily a hardware engineer, but I have done a lot of code development over the years. All for embedded microcontrollers. Most recently it has been C++ in Visual Studio for Raspberry Pi. The visual studio environment was set up by someone else. I have no experience starting from scratch with that. I have no experience with Java or HTML, but I donāt think that will be a major issue.
If you can give me a little guidance on how to get āRun and Debugā going, it would be greatly appreciated.
Itās been a while since I last worked on this so my memory is probably a bit vague and as mentioned it sounds like things with the SDK may have changed.
Hereās what I remember:
- I āinstalledā the plugin by creating a symlink from the Stream Deck plugin folder to my development project folder.
- After making changes I think I had to exit and restart Stream Deck app (sounds like youāre saying thatās no longer enough, not sure)
- I did use VS code for editing, but not for debuggingā¦
- For debugging I used Chrome/Edge debuggerā¦ as described here.
Iām pretty sure VS code can now debug using the chromium debug api, but I donāt know if it works with Stream Deck plugins and I never got around to trying.
Brad
Thanks Brad. I have a little research to do.
No idea what a symlink is.
Not sure about starting and stopping with your method. I was talking about a full rebuild with your pack.bat file.
VSCode allegedly has some debug capability, but not as much as full VS. For sure I can build from there as I intentionall created an error and it told me about it.
Iāll look at that debugger if I get nowhere with BS Code.
I have done primitive debugging for years using printf and teraterm. Not a fan compared to VS. But if thatās what it takesā¦ Not sure how to connect a serail port, though.
Iāll keep you posted.
Itās just a link from one directory to another. See Windows mklink command.
The pack command is only for distribution - it basically zips up the source folder with some additional meta data that Stream Deck uses to āinstallā the plugin. You donāt need to use this during development.
VSCode has better debugging of JavaScript code that full VS.
The Chromium debugger is definitely the easiest way to debug.
You donāt need to go down that route. The chromium debugger supports full set of debug commands, including debugger console logging if you need it.
Thanks again Brad. Please excuse my stupidity here.
I understand about symlink now. Pretty simple. So when Stream Deck looks in Blah\Blah\Balh\AppData\Local\Elgato\StreamDeck\com.toptensoftware.cantabile it is really looking into the development folder.
But it seems like it would still be looking for the same stuff:
But there is nothing resembling that in the development folder. What am I missing?
This is the directory you should symlink to the com.toptensoftware.cantabile.sdPlugin directory in the github repo:
C:\Users\brad\AppData\Roaming\Elgato\StreamDeck\Plugins\com.toptensoftware.cantabile.sdPlugin
Looks like youāre looking at this directory:
C:\Users\brad\AppData\Roaming\Elgato\StreamDeck\QtWebEngine\com.toptensoftware.cantabile
Thanks, Brad. I will double check it soon. I
think I was in appdata/localā¦
Iām currently in Ethernet hell. My music laptop and wifeās phone would connect to WiFi, but not my phone. I tried a few router, phone, modem reboots and eventully lost everything including wired to my AV rack and work PC. Wife is not happy with no TV. Factory reset of router restored wired, but nothing will connect to WiFi. Tomorrowās another day. Sighā¦
I feel the pain. Just switched to FTTP here and rejiggering everything was fun (not).
I have made another baby step or two. I am now running your stream deck plugin via the symlink.
Specifically:
Installed the released plug in
Verified it worked in stream deck
Closed stream deck
deleted C:\Users\raydy\AppData\Roaming\Elgato\StreamDeck\Plugins\com.toptensoftware.cantabile.sdPlugin
mklink /D āC:\Users\raydy\AppData\Roaming\Elgato\StreamDeck\Plugins\com.toptensoftware.cantabile.sdPluginā ?C:\MyShit\StreamDeck\cantabilestreamdeckplugin\com.toptensoftware.cantabile.sdPlugin"
Fired up stream deck - still works!
Fresh setlist, simple simple song with just a piano VSTi connected to the onscreen keyboard. I added one button to stream deck - your default midi button - ch1 cc 64 to onscreen keyboard. Named it ādamperā. It works.
I changed the button to a toggle and it acts weird, I reported this when I initially installed the released Cantabile plugin, but it went away. Itās back. Starting from black button and damper pedal up. Pressing stream deck button.
1st press - sends CC64=127. Button remains black.
2nd press - sends CC64=127 again. Button changes to blue.
3rd press - sends CC64=0. Button remains blue.
4th press - sends CC64=0 again. Button changes to black.
I looked at this as an opportunity to attempt some debugging. I attempted to add a breakpoint in VSCode but was unsuccessful. I was successful firing up Chrome/Edge debugger per your instructions.
Initial results. I set breakpoints at both āsendMidiā instructions below. Much to my surprise it never breaks on button press. Only on release.
// Send MIDI event with specified pressed state
function sendPressedState(pressed)
{
if (pressed)
sendMidi(makePayload(settings.pressedValue == "" ? maxControllerValue() : parseInt(settings.pressedValue)));
else
{
// Only send the off value when there is an actual controller value
if (maxControllerValue() != 0)
sendMidi(makePayload(settings.releasedValue == "" ? 0 : parseInt(settings.releasedValue)));
}
}
switching back to momentary button, it breaks on press and release as expected. Maybe you intentionally use only release on toggle actions? Iāll need to look closerā¦
Doing everything in VSCode seems attractive, but I donāt want to spend any more time on it. I will go back the editor Iāve been using for 28 years (ultraedit) and use Chrome/Edge debugger from here on out. It also seems to work in my go to browser (Duck Duck Go).
Iām fairly pleased with my progress today. Thanks for the help. Break time!
I didnāt switch much of anything. I installed some WiFi lighting on Saturday which required forcing WiFi to 2.4GHz. But everything was fine when I went back to normal. Sunday, I noticed my phone was not connected to WiFi (Wifeās phone and music laptop both fine). Happens all the time. Reboot router and carry on. Not this time. After a few reboots I lost everything - WiFi and wired. I ended up factory resetting the router. Requires a wired connection to set it back up. No problem - my work laptop is wired via a USB dock. But itās not connecting, big monitor is flashing on and off every few seconds and BT keyboard is blasting out a character as through a button is held down. I had to pull out the dock from behind my heavy-ass desk, and find enough loose cables to hook up my music laptop on the floor near the main Ethernet spigot. Much cursing was involved. Dog went to hide in the bathroom. I got wired back on the air pretty quickly but WiFi would not connect anywhere. I decided to punt now that we could at least watch some TV and chill. Checking my phone an hour or so later, it was now on WiFi. as was wifeās phone and music laptop. This morning I put everything back together behind my desk and work computer was also fine. WTF?
Sorry, Had to rantā¦
Rant received 
I took a look at this. Doesnāt seem to happen when you first add the button, but does if you close and restart StreamDeck.
Anyway, Iāve made a fixā¦ see here.
You should be able to pull these changes from my repo to your fork as described here.
Hey Brad,
Thanks for that. Iāve had to set this aside temporarily as my half-time semi-retirement has been full-time lately. And I need to learn 4 new tunes this week.
I was planning to try to find that bug, but you beat me to it.
My next step will be to attempt to get the plugin to a point where stream deck recognizes that the plugin supports knobs. It looks like a fair amount of work is involved in js and html. Or it might just be my ignorance. I havenāt quite wrapped my head around āProperty Inspectorsā Once that basic functionality is present, I think things will get easier.
No problem. Yes the sdk takes a bit to understand.
Also, to throw a complete curve ballā¦ Iāve notice thereās now this library:
Someone reverse engineered the usb protocol and it lets you talk directly to the stream deck device instead of through their desktop software. Different use case and it wouldnāt work at the same time as the desktop software but for focused integrations would be pretty slick.
Do you use the streamdeck just for Cantabile or for other apps too?
1 Like
Just for Cantabile. Actually donāt use it at all yet. I mainly wanted for knobs that donāt jump when Iām banging on the keyboard. I will take a look at this new thing as soon as I get a chance. Thanks!
Hi @raydyo,
fyi, Iāve been playing with the julusian stream deck libraryā¦ itās excellent. So much easier than than dealing with the streamdeck desktop app plugin framework - the only catch is they coexist. You need to either run your app using the library, or the desktop app, not both at the same time.
Butā¦ you can make it do pretty much anything you like because NodeJS can do pretty much anything - talk to Cantabile, launch apps, make web requests, send keys, etcā¦
The main difference is you write code instead of drag/drop.
If you only want to use your StreamDeck+ for Cantabile I recommended trying this approach. You can use the cantabilestreamdeckplugin code base as a reference for how to talk to Cantabile and just up the buttons you want.
Or, if you can wait, Iām playing around with a little library to make setting up these mappings in code even easier. No time frame though because itās currently just a weekend project and I donāt have the Plus (yet).
Brad