RSBATech-Modules

This Plugin includes the following modules:

Orestes-One
Pylades

Orestes-One

Orestes-One (the brother of Electra in Greek mythology) is a VCV Rack module to control modules and parameters in a rack with the Electra-One MIDI controller. It works together with a specific Electra-One preset to provide two-way control and parameter feedback using smooth 14bit value changes.

Pylades

Pylades (the cousin of Orestes in Greek mythology) is a VCV Rack module to control modules and parameters in a rack with TouchOSC. It works together with a specific TouchOSC preset to provide two-way control and parameter feedback using smooth 14bit value changes.

Key Features

Functionally, Orestes-One and Pylades are basically (MIDI-CAT minus MIDI CC7 & MIDI notes) + (Oscelot minus OSC) + bi-directional Electra-One SysEx or OSC commands plus some of my own ideas

Control individual rack module parameters with rich value and control label feedback on the Electra-One / TouchOSC screen
Smooth 14-bit value controller changes
Manual parameter mapping (from MIDI-CAT)
Navigate between the mapped modules in the current VCVRack patch using the touch screen of Electra One or TouchOSC.
Optionally scroll the VCVRack window to the mapped module
Automap a single module
Automap all modules in a rack in one go, optionally skipping or overwriting existing module mappings
Mouse-free rack module selection and navigation using Electra One or TouchOSC
Special support designed for MindMeld PatchMaster modules in a rack, allowing switching between a single rack-level mapping and individual module mappings.
Create and manage re-usable module-specific mappings stored in a module mapping library file
Export and import module mappings, so they can be shared and curated by the user community (there are over 3000 modules to be mapped after all!)
Factory - provided module mappings included
Use multiple Pylades and Orestes-One modules connected to different TouchOSC and Electra-One controllers in the same Rack (e.g. dedicate one iPad to controlling a Mix Master, another iPad for controlling other modules and an Electra-One controlling a Rack-wide mapping, all at the same time)

Plus most MIDI-CAT features (up to its v2.0.beta4)

Documentation

Please see the Wiki for the Pylades, Orestes-One and Electra-One preset user guide.

Change History

Please see the Change Log.

Installation from github - built installers

Until this plugin is made available in the VCV Rack library:

Download the latest RSBATechModules installer for your platform from the releases list in this git repository
Copy the extracted .vcvrackplugin file into the Rack2 plugins folder for your machine's architecture e.g. on mac: /Users/<user>/Library/Application Support/Rack2/plugins-mac-arm64. Restart VCVRack and it should automatically unpack and install the module.

Building & Installation from Source Code

To build the plugin, download and unzip the VCVRack SDK for your machine's architecture and target VCVRack version.

Then run (change path to SDK folder):

 RACK_DIR=~/Projects/Rack-SDK-arm64 make install

If everything goes OK, a new .vcvplugin file is created in your installed VCVRack Rack2 folder. Now just stop and start VCVRack and the plugin will load its modules.

You can open a terminal window and view the VCVRack log to help debug any issues

cd <path to rack2 folder>
tail -f log.txt

Licenses

The software within the src/ folder is licensed under GPL 3+ (see LICENSE for more details)

The UI elements within the res/ folder are licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. You may not distribute modified adaptations of these graphics.

Acknowledgements

At least 80% of the code of Orestes-One was directly copied from the MIDI-CAT MIDI controller module which is part of the essential stoermelder PackOne VCV Rack Plugin. I literally could not have created this plugin without it.

Thanks to TheModularMind for code, inspiration and ideas from the Oscelot module.

Pylades (& Oscelot) uses code from the oscpack project. I modified the Pylades oscpack code to compile on the Mac ARM64 architecture.

Development

Development notes, in case I forget.

Bumping RSBATechModules Plugin Version

Both the Electra One and TouchOSC presets do a version handshake with a connected Oresets-One / Pylades VCVRack module when they start up. This is designed to ensure the combination of device preset + VCVRack module is supported. It also allow for breaking changes in the API between the device and the VCCRack module ... the user will be prompted to upgrade their device preset if necessary.

For this to work, the device presets have hardcoded semver version strings which track the semantic version of the RSBATechModules VCvRack plugin. The major and minor versions must match. The semver patch level version does not need to match. This also means that incrementing the minor version of the RSBATechModules plugin will require a new version of the device presets.

function isPyladesCompatibleWithTouchOSC(pyladesVersion)
  local semver = string.find(pyladesVersion, SEMVER_PATTERN)
  if (semver == nil) then return false end
  local pyladesMajorVersion, pyladesMinorVersion = string.match(pyladesVersion, SEMVER_PATTERN)
  return oscMajorVersion == pyladesMajorVersion and oscMinorVersion == pyladesMinorVersion
end

Bumping RSBATechModules plugin patch-level version:

Non-breaking API change

Update version in plugin.json
Update README.md Version badge
Update CHANGELOG.md

Finally:

Tag last commit with vX.Y.Z before pushing to github. (This will trigger the github actions to build a new release)

Bumping RSBATechModules plugin minor-level version:

Breaking API change in either Pylades or Orestes-One (probably usually both at same time)

Repeat 1st set of patch-level version steps
Edit pylades .tosc file ROOT script, change the local OSC_PRESET_VERSION = "2.0.0-beta7" version string, then commit updated .tosc file
Edit Electra One preset Lua script, change the local E1_PRESET_VERSION <const> = "2.0.0" version string, then Save Revision