KMI Forums

hi there

i think it's been mentioned before but is it possible to send info (only 4 letters or numbers obviously !) to the softstep display from ableton/mfl? my idea is at some point to not need to look at the laptop or even have it closed and out of the way. but in order to do this i'd need to know where i am in the session view so i know what track i am about to play. so if i named each track with four letters, then as i move left and right the display would show the relevant track name. then after i rest on a track for a few seconds, it then switches back to showing other info, like the preset i am on, or if the track is armed /recording /muted/soloed etc

hope this makes sense and if anyone can provide any help then i'd be well grateful

cheers

Yep it's totally possible. You can control the display as you do the LEDs with CCs.
Page 68 of the manual has all the information on what CCs control each of the characters of the display.

To do what you'd like, you'll have to observe the selected track, fetch it's name and then translate the letter to the proper MIDI value (a coll, dict, or js object would be a good idea).

You could set up a timer, that after a certain amount of time, you can send another group of CCs to the display to update it to whatever you like.

Totally possible, and might be a fun little project!

hi again - it's been a while but i am now starting to write a patch to do this

so far i have just done a small test patch to try and send four letters to the softstep display but at the moment i cannot get it to work. i use the softstep in hosted mode and get it to control ableton using midiyoke 1. i noticed in the softstep manual page 68 that in order to send cc's (50 to 53 in this case) you have to send them on SSCOM1, but i cannot select this in the ableton preferences. is there no way that i can just receive midi from the softstep on midiyoke 1 and send to the softstep on midyoke 2? or am i missing something? as i remember i have to use the softstep in hosted mode in order to get access to midiyoke

thanks