Toggle Mute On Rodecaster DUO - Button Not Reflecting The Change

Hi! Thanks for developing this plugin! I was desparately looking for a way to control a Rodecaster Duo via StreamDeck I am playing with the plugin a bit now and tried to create a simple mute/unmute button with 
the help of Neil Farrimond's material. The Rodecaster does exactly what I was hoping to get, but I am not getting any visual feedback on the StreamDeck. I am thinking the Rodecaster is not reporting back the state update or it is interpreted wrongly. Not sure, that's why I am here

Please have a look at the screenshots that show my button configuration.

I also thought that the button type should probably be "toggle" when I want to toggle something, but that turned out to show an unexpected behavior: The toggling works but only on every 2nd button press. The icon doesn't change either.

Any ideas?

cheers,
Mathias

I understand, from my discussion with Neil, that Rode for some reason, is very reluctant to reveal details of their Midi implementation.

Judging by the log file, RodeCaster seems to treat value 1 (not 127) as "On". When the plugin sends value 127, RodeCaster echoes value 1 back. Try to set the "On" value to 1 in the plugin, and see if it makes any difference.

The toggle behavior you describe may happen when the receiving side (RodeCaster, in this case) handles the toggle itself (and toggles the state on each "On" command). It may also be due to the fact that the plugin and RodeCaster don't agree on the value for the "On" state.

I suggest that you first try setting the On value to 1 in the plugin (and also mark the checkbox to treat all values above 1 av "On"). If that doesn't change the toggle behavior (or anything else), you can try configuring the button as a Push button that always sends the On command.

With the On value set to 1 the icon changes as expected, but only as long as I hold the button. I would assume that makes sense with the button type set to "Hold"!? So I changed that to "Toggle". Now, the icon toggles on every key press while the setting on the Rodecaster Duo changes every 2nd press of the button. So they're immediately out of sync.

Strangely, the hardware button on the device also only works on every 2nd press once, then it's back to normal.

Did you try my suggestion to set the button to "Push"?

Yeah, sorry. The configuration as in the screenshot, does nothing. No reaction on the device side.

It's very odd. Looking at the log file, I get the impression that it works as expected when the plugin is set to toggle.

When the plugin is set to Push there is no response from RodeCaster so it looks as if it only responds when the state changes. When set to Toggle and the plugin sends a 1, it receives a 1; when it sends a 0, it receives a 0.  

Why RodeCaster only toggles every other On command is a mystery, and what the 1 and 0 responses from RodeCaster mean if they do not indicate the state is also a mystery.

Sorry, the RodeCaster functionality makes no sense to me, and I have run out of ideas for controlling it.

Thanks for your help, though. I decided to play with sendmidi and receivemidi on the CLI a bit and see if it makes any sense to me. Let me share my findings:


As you can see, I let "receivemidi" run in the background printing out what comes from the Rodecaster to the computer, while sending midi commands with "sendmidi".

Code:

➜  ~ clear
➜  ~ receivemidi dev RODECaster\ Duo cc 27 ch 1 &
[1] 35328

➜  ~ # DEVICE: UNMUTE / ON

➜  ~ sendmidi dev RODECaster\ Duo ch 1 cc 27 1
channel  1  control-change    27    1
➜  ~ # DEVICE MUTE / OFF (CHANGE!)

➜  ~ sendmidi dev RODECaster\ Duo ch 1 cc 27 0
channel  1  control-change    27    0
➜  ~ # DEVICE MUTE / OFF

➜  ~ sendmidi dev RODECaster\ Duo ch 1 cc 27 0
➜  ~ # DEVICE MUTE / OFF

➜  ~ sendmidi dev RODECaster\ Duo ch 1 cc 27 1
channel  1  control-change    27    1
➜  ~ # DEVICE UNMUTE / ON (CHANGE!)

➜  ~ sendmidi dev RODECaster\ Duo ch 1 cc 27 1
➜  ~ # DEVICE UNMUTE / ON

➜  ~ sendmidi dev RODECaster\ Duo ch 1 cc 27 0
channel  1  control-change    27    0
➜  ~ # DEVICE UNMUTE / ON

➜  ~ sendmidi dev RODECaster\ Duo ch 1 cc 27 0
➜  ~ # DEVICE UNMUTE / ON

➜  ~ sendmidi dev RODECaster\ Duo ch 1 cc 27 1
channel  1  control-change    27    1
➜  ~ # DEVICE MUTE / OFF (CHANGE!)

I think the pattern I am seeing here is that it only seems to actually do anything when a 1 is sent over.  And that value seems to turn it on or off depending on the current state.

Also, I found this quite interesting: This shows the outputs of "receivemidi" when I press the hardware mute/unmute button on the device:

Code:

➜  ~ receivemidi dev RODECaster\ Duo cc 27 ch 1 &
[1] 36173
➜  ~ # DEVICE: UNMUTE / ON

➜  ~ # PRESS HARDWARE BUTTON:
channel  1  control-change    27    1
channel  1  control-change    27    0
➜  ~ # DEVICE: MUTE / OFF

➜  ~ # PRESS HARDWARE BUTTON:
channel  1  control-change    27    1
channel  1  control-change    27    0
➜  ~ # DEVICE: UNMUTE / ON

➜  ~ # PRESS HARDWARE BUTTON:
channel  1  control-change    27    1
channel  1  control-change    27    0
➜  ~ # DEVICE: MUTE / OFF

So, I thought that might be the sequence it expects to toggle, so I wrapped it in script:

Code:

➜  ~ cat sequence.sh
sendmidi dev RODECaster\ Duo ch 1 cc 27 1
sendmidi dev RODECaster\ Duo ch 1 cc 27 0

et voila, the script reliably toggles the channel.

Not knowing anything about MIDI, I am not sure if this makes any sense or whether RODE is is completly abusing the specification here Does this help you in any way to find a way to do it with your plugin?

Hmm, I just found the Script button (see screenshot) but this only toggles every 2nd time. Strange, as I think this is exactly what the script is doing.

If you want the script to send both commands on the same press, you need to do this:

[(press){cc:1,27,1}{cc:1,27,0}]

It's tricky to display the state on Stream Deck since RodeCaster doesn't say which state it has, only that the state is changing. You could have a local variable that keeps a local state and toggle images for each "1"-command from RodeCaster, but I don't know how to get a synchronized view on the state in the first place.

I will try to get in touch with RODE about this. The script you suggested isn't working strangely. Maybe a timing issue?

Yes, you can add something like this to have some space between the commands:

[(press){cc:1,27,1}{wait:100}{cc:1,27,0}]

The wait parameter is in milliseconds.

That works. One more piece to the puzzle