WIP: LFO

[nathanjhood]

[nathanjhood]

Panel stuff.

Fundamental LFO has a width of 9HP - here confirmed by measuring against a row of my HP1 module (pretty much what it was made to do!)

I find that a bit weird though because there are 4 ports, but 9HP? We could say 0.5HP either side and we're even, but it isn't really possible to account for 0.5HP if the module were half the width of Fundamental LFO... so, it's just a "by feel" number, I guess, in Fundamental LFO's case.

I imagine it probably looks rigid and uninteresting when everything is very grid-like with equilateral placement, such as if it were 8HP.

Perhaps a good rule of thumb here - for panels generally - will be; Width = (number of ports * 2) + 1

The spare 1 just being a bit of thumb room. Pun intended.

EDIT: Hmmm... looking at it some more, the extra 1 is a helpful offset, which allows the odd-numbered "big knob" (just one of them) to sit flush in the centre of the row of even-numbered ports. Clever.

[nathanjhood]

Latest: I was able to draught this LFO panel up very quickly (comparatively speaking) within nanoVG, using the new design system and component library Widgets:

Plenty missing, and some obvious thoughts straight off the bat (port spacing?) but lots of great things "just worked":

• lines and (themed) screws automatically placed and drawn
• knob ring from min to max values of the knob's range
• knob is labelled and the text is not obfuscated by the size of the knob
• ports are clearly outputs thanks to the ThemedPortPanelWidget
• port panels merge nicely when close enough (though too close here, tbh)
• ports are labelled
• all the above responds to light/dark theme changes and already uses the global theme (text and BG colors, font, lighting/gradient...)
• one framebuffer holding most of the above

There are a couple more smells under the hood, particularly in Module and ModuleWidget constructor code...

We might be too far in to the LFO already to fish those things out effectively while developing this module; I'll probably sprint to get a few more of this module's features in place before anything else.

[nathanjhood]

Interesting - and, expected - challenge with the panel spacing:

I don't like the port panels being flush against the panel bounds (inner lines) - I think in a hardware scenario, those areas would be a little bit flimsy without the right care, and hence I'm using those inner lines to tell myself what my "safe margin" is, at least according to what's in my head about hardware panels.

In this case, I'll probably reduce the gap just enough and see if I can condense the port panels into one, without squishing up the thumb room for handling cables. If necessary, I'll add some sort of variable to set corner types on the port panel widgets....

[nathanjhood]

Getting this far with the LFO panel today was pretty easy work, thanks to the design system and component library:

Some polish still required, but it's great having for example a variety of Knob types in once view:

• huge unipolar parameter
• large bipolar parameter
• small bipolar trimpot with reduced range

EDIT:

• small bipolar trimpot with reduced range

...reduced range? Yes. Why isn't it rendered? scratches head ah, I should have set the min and max values for the knob in the LFO ModuleWidget constructor...

No problem, it will work. I will perhaps add a button for triggering the phasor reset. Not totally sure about the CLK input.

Onto the DSP shortly! 👍