Hey folks, had my Eyesy for a very short period of two months. This is a positive post with a few bullet point user experience notes. Sorry for the essay!
I was lucky enough to get one second hand in NZ. Have had a blast so far with all the modes and also with breaking other peoples modes for my own (lots of importing very grungy low qual jpegs for their textures).
I also played a recent NYE headline show with my band Grecco Romank and had the Eyesy up on my synth and sequencer rig. Really adds to our live show.
Having locked myself away for a week around the christmas period to program an accompanying set for the every track in our live set, and knowing that Eyesy is allegedly having an overhaul, I thought Iād add some recent user experience and thoughts.
Maybe itās useful to future updates, and maybe I can get some tips in case anyone seeās workaround for the couple of issues I have.
is it absolutely necessary to have the snapshot button only available for taking screenshots? It seems like there could be an opt in (via the editor) for a completely different parameter here akin to toggling freeze on
whilst in the options mode / whatever its called (shows you mode names, wi fi connect etc)ā¦is it necessary to have a giant splash of your recent screenshots? During the show I wanted to check a couple of parameters, and the screenshots being in the middle of the screen make it hard to be discrete about checking on Eyesy parameters
there is an inconsistency when restarting the eyesy regarding midi channelsā¦ie Iāll be using triggers from midi channel 14, but an emergency restart might restart on midi 14 or just pick another random channel and also readjust your audio input levels and also the midi trigger values
the midi pitch value (127) for toggling the freeze on/off is hectic and unreliable. Why not use another CC value?
Is there a physical command for wiping / deleting āfavourite scenesā? I found before the gig I had to quickly login to the editor and check for accidentally saved scenes (an easy mistake to make but detrimental if you rely on PGM controls for recalling specific modes
Is there a smarter way to both rely on PGM numbers for recalling scenes but also creating new modes? While creating my set I would develop a new mode, but this created a ripple effect that bumped the PGM numbers around. I tried to rename new modes with lower or higher values so they would either be at the top or bottom of the modes list, but I couldnāt find a consistent way to then reedit my midi PGM commands to recall the same modes. That basically means that if I create any new modes, I would then have to completely re program every song in the set.
Is there a limit to the amount of modes you can create?
My coding is terrible, but Iām learning, and able to at least work with various bots to make my own modes, is there a py line of code that relates to the freeze toggle function? Some of my newer modes do not seem to have in their structure, and I cannot seem to find any reference to this in other modes where freeze works.
Anyway - apologies again for a longish list of stuff
love the eyesy!
Thanks for the notes, we have been working on the Eyesy software, so it is good to hear some suggestions!
One thing weāve been working with is Shift + key for adjusting settings on the fly, so this might be an option for this key as wellā¦ some kind of freeze effect would be cool!
Agreed, working on the OSD so it is a little more trimmed down!
Weāll take a look, the configuration settings been overhauled so hopefully this problem is solved.
yeah, that is also on the list!
Currently you can press and hold the save button for ~2 seconds to delete the scene, did you try this?
Iāll have to take a look at this to recall how it works (or doesnāt work), one idea was to have a MIDI mapping screen where you could just explicitly map PGM numbers to scenes or modesā¦ but donāt know if weāll get that all done for this release.
I donāt think so, I guess it would be eventually limited by the machines memoryā¦
So the Eyesy back end software is responsible for clearing or not clearing the screen depending on the screen clear toggle. But you can write a mode that clears the screen itself, in which case it will clear regardless of the toggle, so this might be what is happening?
I should add that the PGM / mode mapping is the hugest difficulty and hurdle.
My band decided - lets add a new track to the set, however, unless I fall back on an already existing series of modes, then I definitely have to look forward to hours at the very least to then fix and check PGM messages for an already programmed set.
I use a Digitakt to sequence my Eyesy alongside a Hypno (the 2 pair very well together BTW). I have the same problem when I just want to tweak a preset without having to save as new and then change a bunch of PCās. This will likely be fixed by a SHIFT + SAVE to overwrite an existing preset.
Iām repeating this for the benefit of the OP and am not nagging you @oweno . I know you guys are working on this and other updates.
Fabulous unit and I hope you guys scale up like Elektron and make a boatload of money and friends out of what you do.
But I donāt really know how it should handle deleting a scene, scene numbering would get wonky / confusing. I guess scenes could be named some other way, like by dateā¦ might be easier if there were just fixed 128 fixed scene slots instead of the endlessly growing list nightmare!
I found my personal workaround, working with Scenes. I donāt change existing scenes in the Scenes.csv, and I have 4 scenes per song (and one scene that is called by the songname, producing an error when loaded with the arrow buttonsā¦). So I end up with a Scenes.csv that I can read, know which scenes belong to which song, and PGM change values will be āa new song every 5 scenesā.
For me, shift-save for updating a currently selected scene would already be a game changer. But, having a visual editor link thing in the OSD, why not
