In response to an email from Paul Hodges on the subject (to keep the discussion in one place):
Thanks Martin. Brett sent me the same over the weekend
Thanks for
a remarkably smooth and effective implementation!
Just a couple of remarks from starting out with it:
I find the amber colour that you added late on to be quite unusable.
Also, in my room's lighting at least, even the distinction between
bright and dim is not as clear as it might be. I know this is limited
by the hardware, but I did idly start wondering about the possibility
of an alternative scheme to enable using just four colours as two
on/off pairs say orange/red and yellow/green. However, I couldn't
think of a way to add that easily without hugely disrupting what you've
already done...
Internally, the physical Launchpad buttons have two-colour LEDs within them (green and red), with three brightness levels allowed for each.
As I mentioned previously, the orange, amber and yellow are necessarily all fairly similar (different ratios of red-to-green, being a limitation of the hardware), but I felt they were just different enough to be useful, to my eyes at least.
The colours that give the maximum physical differences in brightness between the dim and bright states are 'red' (R=1,R=3), 'green' (G=1,G=3) and 'amber' (R&G=1,R&G=3), so sticking to using just those three colours should in theory give the most visible difference between the on/off states and colours, although of course it might depend on your eyesight and the lighting conditions in your organ room.
If you use just those three colours, do you find the results clear enough to be useful? (I find those colours to be very clearly different and to show the differences between dim/bright very clearly.)
but I did idly start wondering about the possibility
of an alternative scheme to enable using just four colours as two
on/off pairs say orange/red and yellow/green.
Given that the Launchpad only supports three basic colours (red, green, amber), I would have thought that might not help much, in that your proposed 'off' colourse (orange, yellow) might still be perceived as rather similar, or at least no less similar than using only the existing main three colours (red, green, amber)?
Best regards, Martin.
Hauptwerk software designer/developer, Milan Digital Audio.