Hi,

I recently made an interesting discovery. I have been using a midi controller I made to use as controls for a looper in Pd. When I press a button for a loop function an LED usually turns on to give me visual feedback. If I turn on an effect, an LED turns on. Play, stop, reverse, speed change, etc, an LED turns on.

This looper has always been buggy and glitchy. it's never really worked right and I always assumed I had some timing thing off or I made a mistake in the patching.

I accidentally discovered today that If I disable all the LEDs it works perfectly. I think Pd is prioritizing the LEDs over the audio processing or midi messages. I know in Max there is a way to disable this by turning "overdrive" off in the Audio Settings window.

Is there a way to prioritize the MIDI and Audio over LEDs in Pd so I can still use LEDs, but their timing isn't exactly perfect? Or even at least some of the LEDs? I use ctlout objects to turn on the LEDs.

Thank you in advance for any possible suggestions.

@nicnut My best guess is that you are suffering Midi feedback...... so when Pd sends a message to the controller it is sent back to Pd and Pd sends it again to the controller... etc. etc.
The same thing happens of course when you press a button on the controller.
There should be a setting in the controller that will stop received messages being sent back, but if not then you will have to block them in Pd, probably using [change]
David.

Hi David,

The controller is something I made. It is Arduino Mega based.
You could be right about your suggestion. I think the sensors are constantly sending the controller values into Pd. I didn't know that would affect the LEDs or create an overload of info.
I will look into change. I will put a change object after every ctlin so it's not sending data all the time. I'll let you know if it works.

@nicnut Put a [change] into the Pd send for control of the leds too... as when they change they are probably sending their state back to Pd.... and Pd is probably sending that again..... etc.
David.

@nicnut You could test @whale-av's hypothesis by inserting PocketMIDI (https://www.morson.jp/pocketmidi-webpage/) in between your controller and Pd and watch the traffic.