mouseover-vu~-help.pd
mouseover-vu~.pd

I was very curious if this could be done. And honestly, believe colorized connectors (showing env~) should be a feature, and, if not that then, a plugin cursor that lights up according to env, or possibly even value. (But, alas, alack, making plugins is not (yet) in my mission statement).

So, for now, this points in that direction.

Enjoy. May it serve you well.

Peace through Pure Data.
-S

A movable, autoconnnecting vu meter;
esp. for debugging code;
;
requires: iemguts, cyclone, that dsp be on, and that the [namecanvas watchmvu] object be added to the patch that you want to investigate.;
;
Once setup and the abs is added, switch to Edit Mode, and left click and drag the vu meter over any audio objects and let it rest over the top-left-most corner of the object..;
;
The meter will autoconnect to that object's first outlet~. If you move it away (>25px) it will disconnect.;

I.e. allowing you to track and investigate the audio flow~ within your patch.

@svanya Good idea. The demise of "magic glass" being the greatest loss in Vanilla.
David.

@whale-av Thank you, for letting me know. I appreciate it.

Updated it a bit below and will have to look up "magic glass", not familiar with it.

UPDATE:

This mini versions has;

a smaller name so easier to write in: mvu;
numbers [0..10,+] indicating level(:+ for over rms=1) and;
is much smaller (25x25 px but still colorized), so looks more like an actual pointer.

mvu-help.pd
mvu.pd

Brought this up in another thread, noticed a simple refinement. If you replace [send watchvmu] with [iemguts/sendcanvas 1] you don't need the [namecanvas] and there is no worry about collisions if you are using this abstraction in multiple patches.

@oid That's great. Glad you found a way to improve on it.

Did you share the patch somewhere?

-s

With a [snake~ out] between [input~] and [env~] it shows the first channel of a multichannel signal.
mvu.pd

It's also possible to have a multichannel display

4mvu.zip

@svanya I kept on fiddling and ended up doing a major rework, have yet to sort out the disconnect logic but it is more efficient and now connects when you are within 25 pixels of the left outlet instead of left inlet, it is more predictable in connecting and disconnecting in general. Also got rid of the cyclone dependency and made it so it only does its thing when you click on the abstraction and not on any click so no collisions between canvases. Also added a print too the right outlet of the [inlet~] so you can use it to probe non-audio non-float stuff. No idea when I will fix the disconnect, at this point it only disconnects when it makes a new connection, which is not a terrible setup and perhaps more ideal.

mvu-2.pd
Edit: Oh yeah, I forgot the multichannel stuff, had a plan for that but don't recall what it was.