Hereafter, I summarize all my suggestions regarding productivity enhancements on ERAE Lab as well as a few bugs I've noticed :
Enhancements :
- Ability to copy / paste and swap pages within a project or between projects, (that should also be possible on-device)
- While copy/pasting, all the properties of the copied objects should be inherited by the target objects. Currently it tries to avoid duplicate messages by incrementing from the last unused value, but most often this is not the desired behavior. Alternatively, this could be an option on ERAE Lab's global settings (to inherit properties/IDs or not)
- Ability to select multiple objects to apply property changes all in once, at least when they have identical properties, rather than having to click and edit them one by one
- Improve the control objects move interaction over existing objects (objects being moved should not collide with existing ones). This is especially annoying when trying to move a selection of objects in an already cluttered layout
- Some project management computer side would be appreciated. Like having a basic project browser and a specific place in a computer's directory where we store them
- Add global routing settings on the project level. then an option on the control object properties to override the global routing. Right now, when we need to map just one piece of software or hardware, we need to explicitly tell ERAE Lab the port and channel to use for each control
- There should be a controller "reset to initial value" option implemented on all the controls, which would avoid us having to add a specific button or shift function for this. Could be in the form of a gesture, some dedicated pixels on the control or using the left arrow hardware button while pushing to max aftertouch pressure. It should also be possible to have the control reset itself when untouched.
Bug fixes :
- The collision with existing objects mentioned above may be considered as a bug
- Sometimes, when pasting objects , they paste on the wrong page especially when not in page 1 of the project
- There seems to be a bug with preview mode that makes you occasionally lose changes made on previous objects' parameters while editing the layout (like if it pulled from the ERAE or failed to keep the changes after unselecting the control object)
- Pushing project to ERAE from Lab often fails and results into an empty surface on the ERAE. It is needed then to select an object/page then retry
- When you set a target value for a Fader1D control by creating a button control with same controller ID as the fader, it always sends 0. Example : you can simulate Mute function for a mixer fader (as it does send 0), but if you try to send 127 as a value through a button mapped on the same controller ID, it will still send 0
- Project color palette is not saved within the project, so you have to reconstitute is by copying it from the existing objects each time you reload your project on ERAE Lab.
That's it ! Quite a long list indeed. Though it is overall very pleasant to build layouts because of the astonishing ease of use of ERAE Lab, I felt I spent too much time on repetitive actions or necessity to restart/retry things because of the bugs.
If all the above is fixed, I'm probably in risk of developing G.M.S. (Gear Mapping Syndrome) with the ERAE
I've had that pasting problem, and a frustrating thing where a saved layout saves the wrong layout.
All the controls have many, many options on them, and auditing those settings is difficult with a visual interface, so I'm probably going to make a python module that works with the .emk files directly.
This will be even more useful if you ever increase the number of objects available from the 48 that it is now.
2 people like this
A
Alexandros Roussos
said
12 days ago
@Henry Lowengard sounds good, can't wait to see that !
If you are proficient in Python, you might be able to help with this other wish of mine :-)
Erae2 has no officially supported API at this time. The API is a means of communication at a low level to the device via MIDI System Exclusive messages, and as such, has no language. There are a lot of virtual controls that the Erae could benefit from, but that takes work in the firmware first, then support in Erae Lab. I don't know how much room and processing power can be further budgeted for on the Erae's CPU and internal memory.
My python work would be to wrap objects around the components of Erae .emk files, which could then be used to validate and generate the device's controls using the existing set of keys, buttons, and faders. This would help eliminate a lot of tedious work when you want a lot of related controls. It could handle a few other internal design problems like the ones I ran into yesterday: creating controls aligning to the MIDI control standards about what a control number is supposed to be used for. None of this work would be done in a visual editor, little scripts would get written that read and write .emk files (and get and send them to the erae).
A
Alexandros Roussos
said
12 days ago
Thanks for the clarification, I thought this API doc :
Was to create custom controls. There actually also used to be an "API" object in ERAE Lab, not sure if this is linked with the above doc and if this was to create custom controls. I don't see this API object on the latest ERAE Lab versions but hopefully this will come back as the documentation is still public on their downloads page.
Alexandros Roussos
Hereafter, I summarize all my suggestions regarding productivity enhancements on ERAE Lab as well as a few bugs I've noticed :
Enhancements :
- Ability to copy / paste and swap pages within a project or between projects, (that should also be possible on-device)
- While copy/pasting, all the properties of the copied objects should be inherited by the target objects. Currently it tries to avoid duplicate messages by incrementing from the last unused value, but most often this is not the desired behavior. Alternatively, this could be an option on ERAE Lab's global settings (to inherit properties/IDs or not)
- Ability to select multiple objects to apply property changes all in once, at least when they have identical properties, rather than having to click and edit them one by one
- Improve the control objects move interaction over existing objects (objects being moved should not collide with existing ones). This is especially annoying when trying to move a selection of objects in an already cluttered layout
- Some project management computer side would be appreciated. Like having a basic project browser and a specific place in a computer's directory where we store them
- Add global routing settings on the project level. then an option on the control object properties to override the global routing. Right now, when we need to map just one piece of software or hardware, we need to explicitly tell ERAE Lab the port and channel to use for each control
- There should be a controller "reset to initial value" option implemented on all the controls, which would avoid us having to add a specific button or shift function for this. Could be in the form of a gesture, some dedicated pixels on the control or using the left arrow hardware button while pushing to max aftertouch pressure. It should also be possible to have the control reset itself when untouched.
Bug fixes :
- The collision with existing objects mentioned above may be considered as a bug
- Sometimes, when pasting objects , they paste on the wrong page especially when not in page 1 of the project
- There seems to be a bug with preview mode that makes you occasionally lose changes made on previous objects' parameters while editing the layout (like if it pulled from the ERAE or failed to keep the changes after unselecting the control object)
- Pushing project to ERAE from Lab often fails and results into an empty surface on the ERAE. It is needed then to select an object/page then retry
- When you set a target value for a Fader1D control by creating a button control with same controller ID as the fader, it always sends 0. Example : you can simulate Mute function for a mixer fader (as it does send 0), but if you try to send 127 as a value through a button mapped on the same controller ID, it will still send 0
- Project color palette is not saved within the project, so you have to reconstitute is by copying it from the existing objects each time you reload your project on ERAE Lab.
That's it ! Quite a long list indeed. Though it is overall very pleasant to build layouts because of the astonishing ease of use of ERAE Lab, I felt I spent too much time on repetitive actions or necessity to restart/retry things because of the bugs.
If all the above is fixed, I'm probably in risk of developing G.M.S. (Gear Mapping Syndrome) with the ERAE
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Sorted by Oldest FirstHenry Lowengard
I've had that pasting problem, and a frustrating thing where a saved layout saves the wrong layout.
All the controls have many, many options on them, and auditing those settings is difficult with a visual interface, so I'm probably going to make a python module that works with the .emk files directly.
This will be even more useful if you ever increase the number of objects available from the 48 that it is now.
2 people like this
Alexandros Roussos
@Henry Lowengard sounds good, can't wait to see that !
If you are proficient in Python, you might be able to help with this other wish of mine :-)
Endless encoder control type on ERAE Lab
If I am not mistaken, the ERAE API is in Python.
Henry Lowengard
Erae2 has no officially supported API at this time. The API is a means of communication at a low level to the device via MIDI System Exclusive messages, and as such, has no language. There are a lot of virtual controls that the Erae could benefit from, but that takes work in the firmware first, then support in Erae Lab. I don't know how much room and processing power can be further budgeted for on the Erae's CPU and internal memory.
My python work would be to wrap objects around the components of Erae .emk files, which could then be used to validate and generate the device's controls using the existing set of keys, buttons, and faders. This would help eliminate a lot of tedious work when you want a lot of related controls. It could handle a few other internal design problems like the ones I ran into yesterday: creating controls aligning to the MIDI control standards about what a control number is supposed to be used for. None of this work would be done in a visual editor, little scripts would get written that read and write .emk files (and get and send them to the erae).
Alexandros Roussos
Thanks for the clarification, I thought this API doc :
https://storage.googleapis.com/videohosting/DOWNLOAD_Ressources/ERAE_Software/Erae%20API.pdf
Was to create custom controls. There actually also used to be an "API" object in ERAE Lab, not sure if this is linked with the above doc and if this was to create custom controls. I don't see this API object on the latest ERAE Lab versions but hopefully this will come back as the documentation is still public on their downloads page.