Building menu systems in PD and Max 8

Integrations
1

I know the support for PD and Max Gen is not fully here right now, but I wanna start with the coding work.

I wanned to ask if anybody of you has experience with PD or Max in the direction of building a menu or menu system for OLED screens (i own the daisy patch).

I’m experienced in Max and his Audio capabilities, and tried a bit of Pure Data here and there. But do you think it is even possible to build menusystems in this kind of programs? Or can you do sich things only in a pure program language like c++.

And yes I tried to google, but couldn’t find examples besides a tutorial to make a drop down menu in max, but thats not what I have in mind, because it should be more complex.

Sorry for my bad english and the long post.
I hope it was not to confusing.

kind regards Frank

P.S. right now it is less about the conection to the daisy and if I can reach the oled with a gen file or not. It’s more about if it is simply possible to build any kind of menu in this programs.

1 Like
2

There is the Organelle synth, which is a Linux system with Pure Data installed. It uses an OLED for user feedback.

On Organelle you can do something like this to send something to the display, where $1 is the value input.

Screen Shot 2020-07-27 at 17.25.43

This setup writes "P8-AmpEnv…Pre-$1… to the first line of the display.

If you want to research it a bit, maybe there is something in the mother.pd file that launches a long with all PD patches on the Organelle. Maybe you can find something about the communication between PD and OLED there.

I have build a few menu systems for Organelle OLED. And there are more menu systems in the Organelle patch library, that you can check out :slight_smile:

So I would say it’s possible :slight_smile:

3 Likes
3

Just noticed that the Organelle operating system is actually opened sourced.

Maybe you can find some info on how PD talks with the OLED:

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4

Thanks @Jaffasplaffa for that hint. I will look into it and if I find a solution I will post it here :wink:

5

The PD integration is based on hvcc, and not using pd directly on the daisy (daisy doesn’t have an OS so running PD directly isn’t very feasible.

OLED support will be coming, and will likely be in the form of modifying a table in PD. That said, Parameter mapping for the standard controls is still in the works so it may be a little before OLED support is added.

3 Likes
6

was this feature ever added to pd2dsy?

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heavy* and no we can’t write to the display yet.

I’m thinking we could probably just have a table with a special name that gets pushed to the display, as an MVP at least

8

Has there been any development in programming the Daisy Patch OLED screen from Pd?

Otherwise is there a way to combine Pd for handling the DSP and a more traditional language for the OLED? I haven’t touched C++ since grad school 10 years ago, but I’m thinking it might be feasible to hack away at a C++ template for the OLED (I don’t have the time to learn to tackle DSP in C++, I’d rather stick to Pd).

9

Sorry for not following up, it’s hard to keep track of all forums/topics/discussions and reply to them with updates.

Since last February it is possible to insert inline C/C++ code into the board.json - For now this only allows to render the contents of a pd table/array object on an oled. Some manual work to adjust the generated HeavyDaisy.cpp file is needed to do full customizations.

Example json and patch:

{
  "name": "field_oled",
  "som": "seed",
  "display": {
    "process": "hardware.display.Fill(0);\n    float* table_buffer = hv.getBufferForTable(hv.getHashForString(\"scope\"));\n    for (int i=0; i<128; i++)\n    {\n    int pixel = (int) ((table_buffer[i] * -1.0f + 1.0f) * 32.0f);\n    hardware.display.DrawPixel(i, pixel, true);\n    }\n    hardware.display.Update();"
  },
  "audio": {
    "channels": 2
  }
}

2024-10-06_17-38
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Generated code:

hardware.display.Fill(0);
float* table_buffer = hv.getBufferForTable(hv.getHashForString("scope"));

for (int i=0; i<128; i++)
{
    int pixel = (int) ((table_buffer[i] * -1.0f + 1.0f) * 32.0f);
    hardware.display.DrawPixel(i, pixel, true);
}

hardware.display.Update();

Which is inserted here: hvcc/hvcc/generators/c2daisy/templates/HeavyDaisy.cpp at develop · Wasted-Audio/hvcc · GitHub

The code inverts and scales the contents (assumed to be from -1 to 1 aka audio) to the display.

Theoretically you can place any display drawing functions inside of the .display.process section.
I am open to suggestions on how to improve this workflow.