Is there a way to reset the latch of a button from another button?

MetaGrid Talk
1

Hey all. Long time user/fanboy

I’ve recently rebuilt my DAW setup and i’m taking the opportunity to revamp my Metagrid workflow. I’m building a set of visibility buttons for orchestral libraries.

Here’s what i’ve got, and what i want to do…

Here’s a pic of the set up - https://i.ibb.co/BHXB7q7J/IMG-1459.jpg

I have 4 “section” buttons which trigger macros for Strings, Woodwinds, Brass and Percussion. There will be many more, but for now i’m just trying to get these four working.

When you press any of those buttons the macro hides all tracks and then makes only the tracks visible with the right prefix in the title (So, “STR” for Strings, “WW” for Woodwinds etc)

That’s all working beautifully.

I’ve also got a button to “Show all tracks” - does what you’d expect it to

A button for “Hide all tracks” - also does what you’d expect, although the macro it triggers keeps my tempo,signature,markers etc visible. All good there too.

Here’s where it starts getting confusing and tricky.

There are four visibility buttons underneath each of the four “section” buttons which just make that particular section visible or invisible on a toggle . For example, if i click the visibility button underneath the strings section it will only turn that section on or off, leaving everything else as it was before.

When the button is toggled everything works perfectly. The strings become invisible, everything else stays the same and the visibility button changes colour and blinks to let me know “Hey, your strings section is currently invisible”) When i toggle it again the strings come back and the button toggles to its default non-blinking state.

HOWEVER… If I make the mistake of toggling the button to make the strings invisible, and then click the “Show all tracks” button (which turns absolutely everything back on), the toggle button still thinks it’s invisible - and so it’s still flashing. What i’d like to be able to do is add a reset to all the toggle buttons if “Show all tracks” button is pressed.

Sorry, complicated way of writing it, but i hope you get the point!

3

Here’s a solution that should work within MetaGrid Pro’s current features:

Convert your “Show All Tracks” button to a Latching Switch and make it the Group Leader.

Here’s how to set it up:

  1. Change “Show All Tracks” from a Standard Button to a Latching Switch
  2. Assign it a Switch Group (e.g. Group 01) and enable Group Leader
  3. Assign your four visibility toggle switches to the same Switch Group as Followers (no “Leader responds to followers”)
  4. Configure both the Latch On and Latch Off macros on “Show All Tracks” to run your existing show-all-tracks macro — since you want the same action regardless of which state it latches to

With this setup, whenever you press “Show All Tracks” it will push its state to all four visibility toggles, forcing them back to OFF and stopping the blinking — while the four toggles themselves continue to work independently without affecting each other or the Leader.

The only minor quirk is that “Show All Tracks” now has two visual states as a Latching Switch, but since both states trigger the same macro it behaves identically to your current button from a DAW perspective. You can style both states to look the same if you don’t want any visual difference.

4

Gotcha, thanks so much. It’s pretty much working now, although it means i can’t have a “Show all tracks” and a “Show only strings” button along with the visibility as only one of them can be the group leader. I was hoping to be able to set both those buttons to “group leader”. However, i think this works just as well to toggle each section on and off. Incredibly speedy response too, appreciate it so much!

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5

Actually, no, it’s not working unfortunately. The toggle state of “Show all tracks” seems to be messing up the toggle state of the visibility button. In fact now, the toggle doesn’t seem to do anything unless i change the group of the visibility button to something else

Hmmmm

6

Two words: Bome MIDI Translator Pro (BMTP)

Make all your buttons Latching Switches and get BMTP to set which ever button to which ever state you want whenever you want. Don’t bother with the groups thing it’s useless in complex setups.

How it works:

BMTP receives the macro command from MGP on button press. BMTP converts/translates it to a CC message which is sent out on the Metasystems Out Port (that you need to create in Loop MIDI). MGP receives that CC message and toggles all your buttons to however you want.

7

The above has completely confused my tiny little brain :smiley: Just reading through BMTP now. Happy to buy the software, but not sure how you go about doing everything you’ve mentioned above!

8

I don’t use loopmidi as i’m on a Mac - so i think that part of the routing is already taken care of thankfully

9

Launch BMTP

Set up the IN/OUT ports on the right by clicking the green ‘Untitled Project’ at the top.

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Now click on the ‘New Preset’ just below that and then click the ‘T’ in the tool bar to create a Translator’.

10

Click on the new Translator and then open the ‘Incoming’ tab on the right and check the ‘Capture’ box.

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Now when you tap a button in MGP it will be ’Caught’ here. Click on the MIDI message in the capture box. Boom! your new Translator is now ready to send MGP some CC messages. Scroll down on the right and configure the outgoing action to send your Latching switch any message that will toggle it to the desired state.

HTH

11

Thanks chap. Appreciate it! I will do some learning. Still pickling my box, but i think i know what you’re talking about. Basically the buttons shouldn’t send macros anymore, but instead send CC messages that BMTP can translate into something else and send back… I’ll do some research and try and un-knot my brain :smiley:

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