Lighted Combination Pistons

Looking for recommendation(s) for most efficient and cost effective midi encoders/decoders to create lighted combination pistons.

What I want is for the pistons to light when the condition they activate is true, regardless of whether the piston was pushed or not. In other words, if you have a Scoped Registration and you manually enter those stops, that piston should light up. Same outcome with Master Generals, Reversibles and whatever.

Kind of a newbie at this, but that is the way my current Launchpads operate and if I was to create a piston rail, I'd like the same behavior.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Looking for recommendation(s) for most efficient and cost effective midi encoders/decoders to create lighted combination pistons.

You might consider :

https://www.midi-hardware.com/index.php?section=prod_info&product=LITSW

This board is both an encoder and decoder. There is a limitation on the amount of current that can be drawn by the piston lights as the basic board was designed to drive LED's.

along with one or more master controllers (depending how many LITSW's you need to use:

https://www.midi-hardware.com/index.php?section=prod_info&product=MRG2

As far as the control logic, that's built into Hauptwerk. BTW, I edited this part to make a correction to my original comment..

Rgds,
Ed

In other words if for instance an 8' Flute on the Great is controlled by every piston, that would mean that turning on that 8' Flute stop would turn on all the pistons. Is that the logic you are looking for?

Hi Ed:

What is asked is for the physical lighted pistons to match the state of the HW virtual pistons. If you hand register some stops and they happen match a HW piston, it lights up. This behavior is also reflected on a Launchpad if a HW piston button is mapped a lighted button.

To the OP:
I'm not that familiar with the boards that Ed recommends but they should work. The setup is MIDI input and MIDI output which is how the Launchpad works as they stay in sync,the physical lights matching the virtual lights so to speak. The lighted pistons should mimic the Launchpads behavior if assigned to a HW piston.

Danny B.

I originally missed the point of the control logic question as that is already built into,HW. External lighted pistons mirror the HW pistons by means of MIDI output. I don't recall seeing the effect being indicated in the sample set's visual view of the piston's state changing. As compared to how the visual state (on or off) of the stops are shown..This is probably due to the fact that many real pipe organ don't have lighted pistons.

The LITSW board I mentioned is specifically designed to control lighted pistons by means of MIDI out (from HW).

Rgds,
Ec

This may be slightly off-topic, but Hauptwerk's Stepper General pistons do light up on-screen when the stops activated match those set to a particular piston.

Still working on this project. I bought the LITSW and MRG2 boards from Midi-Hardware and have built a prototype with five pistons. Now how do I get this to work with Hauptwerk (as defined in my original post)?

I followed Roman's instructions and using Auto-Detect am able to get a piston to activate a general combination. But changing or cancelling the registration does not turn off the LED. And I still have to push the button a second time to turn the LED off. So, they are still not 'in sync'.

It appears I have a problem with the programming of the midi-hardware, or Hauptwerk, or both.

What is the correct 'mode' for LITSW: Independent, Dependent, CC Value, etc.?

What is the correct input type for Hauptwerk? Auto-Detect selected Generic Midi Control Changes. Is that right?

Any help would be appreciated.

http://forum.hauptwerk.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=18184&p=137873&hilit=scoped+pistons#p137873

Think of it as a two step process. The first being to create the scoped pistons. The second, "connect" the real (hardware) pistons to the scoped pistons. Sounds complicated, but once you understand what to do, you'll find it to be fast and easy.

Rgds,
Ed

I remain confused and unable to get the LITSW and pistons to do what I want. After several emails from Roman, and much manual reading and experimentation the pistons still expect to be pushed a second time to turn off, and LED is not in sync with the status of the combination (i.e., if the combination is cancelled or changed the LED should go off).

If anyone has a better recommendation for the configuration of the LITSW/MRG2 and/or Hauptwerk, I would appreciate it. Otherwise, this little experiment is probably going in a box for a while.

Are you setting up the buttons connected to the LITSW to use HW scoped pistons? As I mentioned here.

http://forum.hauptwerk.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=18184&p=137873&hilit=scoped+pistons#p137873

Rgds,
Ed

I intend to use both Scoped combinations and Master Generals. I have only tested by prototype with Master Generals, but it seemed that either should work with the same configuration (both for the pistons and HW).

BTW, the Dependent mode (#909 via the keypad) is the proper mode to be used on the LITSW. Sometimes referred to as "radio" - one at a time button setup.

In the Independent mode (#908) - all buttons work without interactions to each other. If a button is pressed, associated LED lights, and note-on is sent by the Master Controller (MRG 2 in your case). Another touch of this botton and the LED turns off and note-off is sent (via the MRG 2).

The physically connected pistons will not function properly if you auto-detect them to the pistons on the organ's screen shots directly. There is a difference between the scoped pistons (which appear on a different page) than the pistons you see on the screenshots.

I guarantee this procedure that I described does work, I've built many organs that function correctly. If you've made changes to the MRG2, you may want to reset it to factory default using #979 on the keypad.

After you have scoped all of the pistons on a given manual, you now auto-detect the scoped piston on the Large Registration page by clicking on one of these pistons, then press the physical button (the piston connected to the LITSW).

Repeat this procedure for all the pistons for that particular manual (division). Do the same for the other manuals (fivisions) again by first scoping the pistons for this particular manual, etc.

Rgds,
Ed

I will try this again on a Scoped Combination, but I was testing using the Master Generals from the 'Registration' large menu -- the same one where the Scoped Combinations appear. (see User Manual page 98 for the image I can't figure out how to add to this post).

Check my above post re Dependent vs Independent modes.

Fgds,
Dx

Do you have this User Manual?

https://midi-hardware.com/instrukcje/mrg2i3usman15.pdf

See pages 23 - 26., esp 7.6.2 and 7.6.3.

This manual is old, but most of the info is still good. Roman is working on updating some of the fireware and soon will be announcing some new products. Shhhh

Rgds,
Ed

First of all, Ed, I really appreciate your help.

So, I am closer to what I want. The buttons do now work for the Master Generals (and I assume they will work the same with my Scoped Combinations). Push the button and the registration changes and that button lights up. But is the only way to cancel the registrations AND turn the piston LED off to program one piston as a General Cancel? I did that, and then that light stays on, regardless of what combinations are set.

Maybe that's as close as I can come, but I've grown accustomed to the way my Launchpad behaves and would really like the same from the pistons. I may be asking too much.