Button

For those of you that have been using Buttons for a while, you will notice a significant change in the Inspector The Main categories Inspector, Presets and Configuration  have been separate tabs since the beginning. But from this version all the Inspector categories are also divided into Tabs, cleaning up the interface and making it easier to see what you are actually working with.

Depending on the width of the inspector, the tabs will show Icons.
 

Icons and Labels

And even Split the Inspector, to have more options in view, side by side. Handy for more complex work.

 

 

A Button is a fundamental action handler. You push it, and something happens. It has many properties, which we will explore step by step.

The first thing to notice is the 8 dots in the top-left corner of a selected Button. This is the Handle Bar. When you hover over it, your mouse will change to an open hand, allowing you to click and drag the button around the Canvas.

 

Design tab

Text Fields

Text fields depend on the chosen button style:

• Context: The top line in layout 3,4 and 5
• Text: The middle line in layout 3,4 and 5 (or the only line in the first 2 layouts).
• Text 2: The bottom line in layout 3,4 and 5

 

Each text box includes a Variable Selector button (the folder icon), which opens a dialog for browsing and selecting available system variables. When you find the variable you want, just right click to insert it in to the top textbox, and click on Done when you are finished. You can insert multiple Variables into the top textbox

 

 

 

The text fields in Buttons also have an Expression mode, which lets you build expressions based on variables math and functions.

There is a built-in expression builder which will present suggestions as you type out the expression.

Location

Action Handling

Actions connect the Button to Connections or Internal Actions. Action handlers include:

For example, we’ll use the Press Action Handler:

1. You can search Directly in the + Add Action field, or you can click on the folder at the end to bring up the Action selection dialog box. 

Example: Select ME:Set Program Input. The button will set the Atem switchers M/E 1 bus to input Media Player 1.

Action mode

Every Action has the option for different targeting modes.

Single Connection 

Which is default and targets the connection you chose when adding the action. In the dropdown you can manually select other connection using the same connection module, there may be differences between devices using the samen module.
 

Connection Variable

The Position and Section variables have a Connection Variable type which allows you to define the connection target during runtime. The Connection targets need to use the same Connection module, and you can then use the Set Section Variable or Set Position Variable internal actions to change the target for the action.

Multiple Targets: 

This mode allows you to target multiple connections simultaneously for example a Main and Backup Video Switcher 

there are similar options for the feedbacks except the Multiple targets, as that would deliver results that where less informative but you could use 2 feedbacks with the 3 line Layout. Where one feedback could change Context background color and another feedback could change the Background color. 

Action Steps

 Delays can be set to Absolute or Relative:

Absolute: Actions start a set time after button press (Default).

Relative: Each action runs a set time after the previous one starts.

There is also an option to reorder the steps. This will bring up a dialog box where you can drag the steps in to the position you need.

When clicking on the +Add Action, you are presented with a selection of recently used actions and a option to create a ActionGroup or Actionlogic.

The ActionGroup lets you group different actions together either for Sequential or Concurrent execution

The ActionLogic lets you make Conditional actions or in other words let yo make actions that only executes if certain conditions are met.

For condition, you can use any feedback or use an expression to test a variable for a value.

If the time is between 12:00 and 23:59, pressing the button will set the light to 255 or 100%

If the Time is between 00:00 and 11:59. Pressing the button will set the light to 128 or approx 50%. 

This is just a simple example of how you can use ActionLogic, there are many possible uses for conditional logic in execution of actions.

Feedback

 

with Feedback you can adjusts a button's appearance based on various conditions.

There is an option in this dialog box to select multiple, and for this example we will turn that on. We will select the ME:One ME preview source and the ME:one ME Program source.

This will bring two feedbacks into the properties for the button, and we will change the color for the ME:One ME preview feedback to green and leave the Feedback for the ME:one MEProgram as it is. This will turn the button red whenever the Camera 1 is live on the Program bus. And green whenever the Camera 1 is in the Preview bus.

 

Internal expression Feedback

With the Internal Feedback Expression you can test any variable on the system for values, resulting in a true or false state. In the example above we are testing the variable $(time.hh) to see if the hours is greater than or equal to 18 on a 24hrs clock, if the time is 6pm until midnight  the equal or grater than >= will be  true and the feedback will show the true state. From midnight to 5:59pm the expression will be false and the feedback will show the false state.

 

Action and Feedback Repeaters

In some connections the settings are made into dropdown list and this will enable the repeater function in buttons.

Clicking on the ... menu inside the dropdown box will bring up the repeater options.

If we click on the Create repeater it will automatically create a button for each of the items in the dropdown list.

And we will have 18 buttons made from one single button. The first button will be a master. 
So if you change any styling on that button it will change on all the "children"

Now let's enable the Repeater function on the feedbacks as well.

 And then we have 18 buttons with feedback for both Program and Preview

To customize a set of repeated buttons there are some repeater options at the bottom of the Inspector.

Clicking on the Customize button will bring up a dialog box.

In the generated buttons window you can customize: Labels, Icons and colors for the buttons, depending on the button style chosen for the master button. In the "All Available Data" window you can hide the buttons for the sources that you don't need to be available. You can also change the sort order of the repeated buttons.

Clicking on the eye icons for the sources will hide/unhide them.

And just like that with a few clicks we have made a simple controller for an Atem 1me mixer with selected sources and both Program and Preview feedbacks.

Encoder actions are intended to be used with surfaces that have encoders on them, like the Stream Deck studio and the Stream Deck Plus but any surface in the same position as a surface with encoders can use an encoder action. We will use a few examples to show how encoders can be used and this will also give examples of expressions and repeater functions.

In the first example we will control 32 DMX lights over ArtNet, we have added the Generic Artnet Connection to our Configuration, and we will use a repeater to make the setup quick and easy.

We will start with 1 button and configure the Encoder action first.

• First we change the Action handlers by turning off Press and Release which are on by default, then we turn on the Encoder Action handler. This will bring up some Encoder specific options in the Action settings.

• Next we will turn on expression mode for the Value option in the Action, note that it says that the legal values are 0-255, so we need to do a bit of math. If we divide 255 by 20 we get 12.75 so to get values between 0 and 255 we have to Multiply the Encoder output by 12.75 hence the need for the expression $(self.encoderValue) * 12.75 Each button will hold its own encoder values in the background so no need to keep track of anything. With that we can already control 1 light with the push of the button and turning the encoder.
• Next we will use the repeater to make the rest of the buttons. But the channel range is not in a dropdown list, so we have to go about it in another way. We scroll down to the bottom of the Inspector and turn on the repeater and type in 32 in the Amount box.

This will now give you 32 buttons, each controlling its own channel of ArtNet Light control. To assign the encoder to any of the 32 buttons, you simply press the button which then will highlight the button, and you can turn the encoder to adjust the light level. You can then either press the button again to release it, or you can press the encoder, which also releases the encoder, or you can select another button, which will assign the encoder to the new button.

There are also a few settings which controls the encoder behavior.

 

Display

 

As we can see the Fader level has preset values in a dropdown list.

And there is a ... menu at the end of the dropdown selector.

We will select that, and select Create encoder selector, and just like that we have now assigned an encoder to select between the different levels in the dropdown list.

There is also a couple of variables associated with the encoder selector.

The $(self.encoderSelectorValue) holds the actual value, and in this case it's a decimal number between 0 and 1, which was also what we used for the Gauge value in the previous example, but here we don't need to do any math, as the number is available to us. What the actual content of this variable is will depend on the connection but you can put it in to a text field and use it as a label to see what the content is and whether it will be useful for you.

 

So we will use the $(self.encoderSelectorValue) variable in the Gauge1 Value field, giving the Gauge the logarithmic feel of the actual values sent to the mixer.

Nested variabel 

There is a little "secret" with the $(self.repeatIndex) variable, and that it that it can be nested into other variables, with the help of the % symbol as a substitution. it's described in the variable browser 

The XR12 has a lot of variables for each channel including one for the Channel Name $(xr12.l_ch1) as we can see the the variable contains a reference to the specific channel _ch1 we can exchange that number with the repeat index making the variable $(xr12.l_ch%) to use the variable nesting of the repeatIndex we need the txt field to be in Expression mode 

Testing Buttons

 

You can also execute actions directly within the action dialog: