From the original SynthMaker forum (2004–2014), with its members’ names and dates.
tcsmith1978 ·
Hi,
Thought I'd have a go at creating some radio buttons but it's a little trickier than I expected. I know I have to use some wireless connections somehwere but it doesn;t give teh behaviour I want. Attahced is the OSm of the basic button. Coudl someone advise me how to set this up so it acts like a radio. A good explantion of how wireless outs and links work woudl eb great so I fully understand.
Thanks in advance
Tim
nix ·
Here's one I made earlier! hehe I'll tackle yours also, but free to use this one. I'll use regular connections prolly, then change it to wireless after if you like. Cheers
nix ·
How's this? Cheers wireless connectors- Are just like regular connectors. You just need to have both ends named exactly the same. The 'link out' must be in a higher level module to connect to the 'link in' hmm, 'out' is different, hmm, someone else will have to tell us where it is applied, sorry. Regards
infuzion ·
thanks guys!
tcsmith1978 ·
Thank u so much nix. I totally get this now!! 😀
trogluddite ·
nix wrote: 'out' is different, hmm, someone else will have to tell us where it is applied
AFAIK, the wireless out is really just for making schematics neater... Here's a little .osm that shows how wireless works far better than I can explain in words...
Notice how the 'Module wireless' is just like feeding a normal wireless from a module output connector - but much neater coz everything is tucked away inside. If you look inside the stock knobs, you can see it used that way a lot in their 'Properties' section - one little module transmits the properties all over the place without any untidy links and transmitters making things look messy.
martinvicanek ·
I revisited this topic because I felt a few things could be added:
• real radio buttons, upon pressing the active button, result in none of the buttons being enabled • it should be easy to change the number of buttons, i.e. add buttons without tedious rewiring (They are radio (= wireless) buttons after all! 😉 ) So here is my creation.
For illustration I have thrown in a few applications which I tend to use quite often: An attenuator, a multiplexer and a selector. Feel free to use and improve! Edit: just corrected a small glitch in the multiplexer/selector modules. 😊
ChrisHooker ·
I noticed that some of your buttons get broken as the result of copy/pasting them to make multiple options. Here's another approach to it:
Here, when one radio button gets selected, the others are deselected, allowing only one active at a time. If you want to add more buttons, just simply connect trigger outputs from the other buttons to the trigger input of the new button, and trigger out of the new to the in of the others. Wireless doesn't exactly work, since you don't want each button to turn itself off every time you try to turn it on. I also made it so you can deselect a button, but you can disable that by going into the "Interaction" module and disconnecting the OFF trigger from the mouse feed, if you want to always have SOMETHING selected.
Hope this helps ya.
martinvicanek ·
Thanks, Chris. I saw your similar schematic in another recent thread. Actually that was what inspired me to give it some more thoughts. Could you please give an indication how my buttons get broken? Wireless works (at least here) because mouse activity seems to override the green bool input of the stock LED. BTW, what I like about your approach is that the buttons react if you click both on the symbol or the label.
ChrisHooker ·
Seems I'm using an earlier version of SM than you, so that might be the prob, but the 1st buttons in each of your examples don't light up for me (like they immediately turn off when you click them on), but they do DISable any other active buttons. Further, all other buttons can be simultaneously active (ex: Label 2, 3, 4, and 5 can all be on at the same time). If I try to copy/paste any of the individual radio button modules, then it's the newest created one that operates differently than the rest.
oddson ·
martinvicanek wrote: real radio buttons, upon pressing the active button, result in none of the buttons being enabled
Not on any car radio I ever saw back when they were mechanical and the source of the metaphor.
My earliest tossed together example from Jan 2006 had a setting to allow 'all off' behaviour. The tricky part was not having it.
Wired versions of radio become too cumbersome as then number of options increase.
martinvicanek ·
ChrisHooker wrote: Seems I'm using an earlier version of SM than you, so that might be the prob, but the 1st buttons in each of your examples don't light up for me (like they immediately turn off when you click them on), but they do DISable any other active buttons. Further, all other buttons can be simultaneously active (ex: Label 2, 3, 4, and 5 can all be on at the same time). If I try to copy/paste any of the individual radio button modules, then it's the newest created one that operates differently than the rest.
Ouch! That's totally unusable then. I'm using SM2.0.5, works flawlessly for the stuff I posted. Although I do encounter problems with more than 10 buttons. So something seems to be buggy there. 😕
ChrisHooker ·
oddson wrote: martinvicanek wrote: real radio buttons, upon pressing the active button, result in none of the buttons being enabled
Not on any car radio I ever saw back when they were mechanical and the source of the metaphor.
There are of course many different ways to mechanically design these, just as there are ways to program the virtual representations. Here's an example of a real radio with the functionality Martin was referring to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWvwJ8kcRiI&feature=youtu.be
oddson wrote: Wired versions of radio become too cumbersome as the number of options increase.
If you look at my schematic, it's really not difficult at all to just add a few extra connectors for each additional button. Anyone could throw one together that has 20 buttons, and have it posted on here within 10 minutes. Save that as a module or a reference schematic on your own computer to throw into your own designs. Need less buttons? Just delete the ones you don't want. Done. Simple.
oddson ·
ChrisHooker wrote: just add a few extra connectors for each additional button
2(n-1) to be exact. For n=10 that's 18 new links.
Total links are 2n*(n-1) just for resetting. No problem for most reasonable sizes and therefore nothing wrong with wired connectors for this. But if you are making one with 10 that's 180 links. {edit}D'oh! n*(n-1) so n=10 means 90 links... I was counting both sides.{/edit}
On the other hand wireless links can be a bitch to trouble shoot when they don't work the way you expect.
It's all good. If a scheme works for what you're doing then it's fine. 🙂
ChrisHooker ·
Haha, Yeah, I don't really worry about the math of it... I just do it. Here's an example with 10 buttons, all wrapped up in a nice little module. Sure, go inside to look at all the connections, and it's a bit of a speghetti plate, but it's not a big deal if it's quick and works.
ChrisHooker ·
Something else I just realized - I made these buttons starting from the stock "Push Button" module from the toolbox, which doesn't include any preset features. If you want that capability, you'll need to modify accordingly.
pall ·
Here is a Radio Button with a different style. As Martinvicanek said, adding a button can be done with "copy / paste", and changing the ID number. View schematic...of boredom. Hehe.
ChrisHooker ·
Very nicely done, pall. Great implementation of wireless operation, easily expandable, good preset handling (INCLUDING the GUI state, not just the output), and your use of the integer switch primitives provides a more stable output than my version. I like! 🙂
trogluddite ·
Here's my favourite solution to the problem. Very similar to pall's in that each button is a module with an ID in the properties. This one allows even more laziness, as some trigger trickery and wireless means no links to make when adding buttons - it also keeps track of how many buttons there are so that the preset parameter is always scaled from zero to one for best VST host compatibility.
(UPDATED: see EDIT further down) The key to the trick is that many sends to the same wireless receiver get added together - so the "Button Count" parameter always adds one for each extra button module. The ID sending is a little more tricky. It works something like this...
1) At rest all buttons output zero, so the sum of the wireless links is also zero. 2) At button press, the ID (and a trigger) are sent - as all other buttons will be at zero, the wireless total will equal the ID of the pressed button - and the ID will pass through to the sample and hold in the main module. 3) The pressed button resets to zero immediately, but crucially, without sending a trigger. So although the wireless sum is nominally back to zero, this zero is not passed through the sample and hold - and the "pressed" ID remains.
The "Silent Reset" module can be made for other kinds of data too - you can find a complete set of them (and another example) in my Toolkit posted at Synthmakers.net... LINK
PS) Re: the troubles with Martin's schematic - I'm pretty sure this is to do with a bug when using multiple boolean wireless sends. Not sure if fixed now, but I know that in older versions, it was almost impossible to make several wireless bool's "OR" together properly. the workaround was to use integers instead, as any non-zero sum of links will count as true.
EDIT) New feature added - automatic module numbering. Each time you drag a new button module in from your toolbox, it automatically gets the next ID. It's not foolproof, so I kept the properties edit box too in case you need to manually re-number. To get the best out of it, you have to work like this...
- Put the button module in your toolbox, making sure that you set the ID to zero before dropping it in. - Always start by putting the master/preset module in place first. - Drag button modules in from the toolbox one at a time, and the IDs will all be entered automatically. NB) It does not work if you "multi-click" the toolbox to drag in many modules at once. And it is very flaky if you use cut and paste - seems to mess with previously entered "properties" values. You don't have to add all the buttons in one session though - you can "top up" the module any time, and still get the right ID sequence.
tester ·
Is your toolkit somewhere here too? The other website is problematic (I can't register there - it tries to redirect somewhere from register page and nothing is loading).
trogluddite ·
Will post it up soon - the example in the previous post inspired me to make a couple of new modules for the kit - will upload both places very soon.
martinvicanek ·
trogluddite wrote: Re: the troubles with Martin's schematic - I'm pretty sure this is to do with a bug when using multiple boolean wireless sends. Not sure if fixed now, but I know that in older versions, it was almost impossible to make several wireless bool's "OR" together properly. the workaround was to use integers instead, as any non-zero sum of links will count as true.
I know it is a bit irrelevant now that various clean solutions have been posted, but thanks for the hint! I realized that my original schematic would generate an avalanche of triggers for ten or more radio buttons. Therefore I modified it to use integers and generate only one single trigger when needed. Successfully tested with 100 radio buttons (Who needs that anyway? 😝 ). Updated my original post accordingly.
tester ·
This is my version of radio buttons. It has one useful option more - turning the button off. For selecting solo units. Net of cables can be simplified with wireless.
geekygenius ·
*Ahem*
This is dynamically expandable. Just separate each option with a comma. You guys make everything too complicated, I downloaded a few and saw a bunch of different modules. This one renders off of a list, so its all nice and clean, not to mention expandable. I haven't tested the option on and option off image changers in the preferences either, so that might need a little fixing. Enjoy!
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