Expression pedal update

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It is placed on hold kinda yes, the “bumper” thing was more of a signal to indicate us that we should focus on other things while we were not shipping those units just yet.

I can’t speak for production pipeline or issues, but can for software issues. We have tried to use it live for a few demos, but results have been subpar. The pedal value changes are not smooth at all, which breaks the whole concept of such a device.

My current and best theory for why that happens is embed CPU being too weak to handle the quick amount of messages needed for smooth operation, together with the lack of a dedicated floating-point co-processor. As we use floating-point numbers for all parameter values in control chain devices, this has the potential to explain why some things run very slow there.
EDIT: I have been told we used to have the peal sending smooth values, so there is a performance regression. in any case it is too early to tell anything, everything is just speculation for now.

There were also some bugs regarding pagination, most we have fixed but a big one still remains where changing pages can trigger CC device disconnects on the Dwarf/Duo side. We work-around this by having 1 single control page when demoing the expression pedal, but obviously this is not ideal.

At least software-wise the 1.14 has the changes needed to handle firmware updates for it, similar to how it is done for the footswitch (and I realize there were reports of this being broken in 1.13 for the footswitch, still need to look into that..).

% curl https://download.mod.audio/releases/cc-firmware/v3/devices 
{
    "api_version": 1,
    "devices": [{
        "uri": "https://github.com/moddevices/cc-hw-arduino-shield",
        "name": "Arduino Shield",
        "label": "",
        "description": "This is a shield compatible with most Arduino platforms.\nIt was conceived to help developers and makers create their own effects controllers with Control Chain, tailored to their own unique performance requirements."
    },{
        "uri": "https://github.com/moddevices/cc-fw-footswitch",
        "name": "XF4",
        "label": "FootEx",
        "description": "The official MOD footswitch extension.\nLike the MOD Dwarf's own footswitches, it allows you to scroll through lists, toggle effects on and off and also define tap tempos."
    },{
        "uri": "https://github.com/moddevices/cc-fw-expression-pedal",
        "name": "ExpPedal",
        "label": "ExpPedal",
        "description": "The official MOD expression pedal.\nLike the MOD Dwarf's own footswitches, it allows you to scroll through lists and toggle effects on and off. You can also control regular parameters using the foot pedal."
    }]
}

% curl https://download.mod.audio/releases/cc-firmware/v3/versions
{
    "api_version": 1,
    "devices": {
        "https://github.com/moddevices/cc-fw-footswitch": {
            "latest": "0.4.1"
        },
        "https://github.com/moddevices/cc-fw-expression-pedal": {
            "latest": "0.0.5"
        }
    }
}

image
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So things are moving while at the same time they are stuck too.
It is frustrating to have these 20+ units in the office gathering dust, but beta-testing for it from user side wouldn’t do much at this point before we solve the major issues we know it has.

Maybe the path forward is to involve some community members here too, the footswitch firmware is opensource and the idea is to have the same for the expression pedal. So maybe we could ship a unit to those willing to help the software/firmware side of it. (this is a personal thought, not a company one)

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