Stress-testing the Softstep devkit.

[TomSwirly]

Pursuant to the last conversation, I decided to see how much data you really could send to the softstep.

I wrote a little Max/Javascript patch to scroll messages across the SS's display and turned the speed up to 1000 characters a second (the maximum rate that Max will practically allow). No problems at all - I could use a Max "line" box to ramp the frequency between 1000 characters per second and 4 and the pedal was rock solid.

Next I tried flashing the backlighting - again, I could go up to my 1000Hz maximum, long past the point where I couldn't distinguish individual flashes any more, with no apparent issues, and ditto with the LEDs (though I wasn't so systematic with them).

Very impressive!

My next step will be reading inputs from the pedal, again through Javascript, and I'll make another demo with all the outputs at the same time while reading the inputs to see how it goes.

You can see the section of the code dealing with the scroller here: https://github.com/rec/swirly/blob/mast ... croller.js - boy, do I crave BBCode around about now! I'll be releasing some sort of demo to that same open source repository in a few weeks.

[TheSupport@KMI]

Awesome!

Everyone should know, though, that in sending messages to the SoftStep at extremely high rates you run the risk of "bricking" your board. When this happens your SoftStep will no longer respond and it will no longer show up in your ports.

We're not yet entirely sure what the speed threshold is and how long you need to be sending messages before this occurs — so proceed with caution. It should certainly be able to handle messages up to the point where you can no longer distinguish individual changes. I've had my board chugging away with LED, backlight, and display changes every 1 millisecond for over 10 minutes now and it's still functioning. It does seem to miss some messages you send it when you're sending so fast.

So everybody — just be careful.

[Macciza]

Hi
Great to have you onboard Tom - excellent work . . .
Do you have any info on the specifics of your build system? I'm having to merge the files to get around the #includes . . . I also realise I checked out your Max stuff a while ago but found similar issues with makefiles throwing errors - Not done a great deal of JS I must admit . . .
Anyway look forward to your work . . .
Cheers
MM

[TomSwirly]

Thanks for the warning re: bricking - but it'll be fine if I unplug it and plug it back in, right?

Regarding the build issue... hmm, interesting!

I just tried the Make from a clean build and it seemed to work fine here (Mac OS/X). You need to call make from the directory the Makefile is in but it's hard to do it any other way :-D.

Send me an email offline at tom@swirly.com - I'm sure we can work it out.

[Macciza]

Hi Tom,

I think part of the issue I had was trying to re-use/recombine various individual parts of your lib, and found the non-Max #include and make system problematic so just copy/pasted/conglomerated instead . . .
I seem to have a few different versions here as well what is the most recent full package?
I seem to have 'tom-swirly-max-javascript' plus 'rec-swirly-66c0e7e' & 'rec-swirly-08fdd3b'
Seems like there is a bit in there to digest . . . .
And looks like some interesting stuff could come out of it all . . .
Cheers
MM

[TomSwirly]

Oh, that bricking. I had wondered if you meant that sort of bricking.

!
!

OK, noted then!

Funny, I originally entitled this post "Testing the SoftStep TO DESTRUCTION" but thought it was too hyperbolic, who knew?

You should probably put that into your documentation - it's pretty easy to do that in development, particularly in Max - if you accidentally turn the period on your metro to 1, it'll start spewing events 1000 times a second, or if you accidentally get a feedback loop through a send...

[TheSupport@KMI]

Tom,

Unfortunately, after you've bricked your board, it will cease functioning regardless of how many times it is plugged in, and a replacement will be necessary. That's why I felt I should warn people attempting to send hyper-fast messages to the SoftStep.

Though, yesterday I did leave my board sitting there with a |metro 1| object sending off every message the SoftStep can take for a good 30-45 minutes and it handled it like a champ.

Just know that a dead board is a possibility.