AKAI APC MINI - Totally Lost

[camgee]

I have no idea how to get any feedback from this. I have read the manual and tried setting things up but to no avail so far. Beginning to wonder if it is working at all. Does Ableton Live have to be installed before it will work at all? Should it auto detect for input universe once it's set? Any guidance on how to get started setting this up. My intention is to use it to make programming scenes faster wherever/however that has to be setup. Thanks in advance.

[camgee]

Ok progress made. It's tricky. I do have a general idea but would love suggestions of how people use it. Is it possible to use it in editing mode with function editor? Is it possible to use it in simple desk? Or do I need to set it up in Virtual desk and then dump values to a function from there?

[pgScorpio]

Please search the forum before posting a question...

See http://www.qlcplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10158

[camgee]

pgScorpio, I did and read the manual several times and have searched it several times before. Not a newbie on the internet. Thanks though.

[camgee]

Have made tremendous progress. Wondering if anyone has a good plan to send feedback to reset the LEDs on the APC so they go off when the show is finished. Shutting down qlc leaves then lit. Thoughts?

[GGGss]

a 'kill all functions' resetting all scenes and this scene triggered by a script?
Is it worth it?
When you restart QLC+ (or go produce) everything gets reset?

[camgee]

I'm more concerned about a way to kill the led button lights when you shut down qlc+ and or blackout. Ie. A way to have qlc+ send a 0 feedback to the midi so the red lights I have on go off...

[BobFather]

Camgee, I think I am having the same issues you had getting things set up. Any chance you could lay out what you did to get the APC Mini up and running? I would greatly appreciate it.

Thank you

[Alhifi]

Hi camgee,

I use sometimes two of the APC Minis and I did not really understand the problem here. Also I use sometimes only one APC Mini with a frame and many pages, a few weeks ago I had the problem here to get the button responses like green, red or yellow to work while switching these pages, but this works too now.

I also have the problem, that the lights from the buttons are still active after closing QLC+, but that is not really a problem for me. So describe yours a little more detailed, please.

Bye
Alhifi

[rajones203]

For the colors I hit the shift+note or drum button twice. Will kill all but the green and red small buttons.

[MichelSliepenbeek]

As i use several multi page frames, i also had the problem that i needed to again initialise the color buttons from the APC Mini, everytime i switched a page.

For every page on my workspace i created a specific 9 by 9 button matrix, attached the appropriate external outputs (the APC Mini buttons from the Input Profile) to each of those 81 buttons and did set the feedback options as i wanted them to be.

You can save yourself some time by only initialising the colors of the buttons that you don't use on that specific page.

Now you need to "hide" every specific button matrix somewhere on the page where it does not bother you: so underneath another widget or frame.
(Check the very last line of the help page "Virtual Console Widget Styling & Placement": https://www.qlcplus.org/docs/html_en_EN ... ment.html .)

Some examples:

[Tooters]

Hi. I've been using APC Mini for a while now, first mk1 now mk2 (with full color). In my experience the pads stay lit until the USB port is unpowered. I've either shut down my laptop running the controller, or unplugged an external USB hub, to turn the controller off.

I have used it exclusively by manually linking every button to a Virtual Console button, and setting feedback values by hand. It's a little tedious, yes. I have a cheatsheet of all the relevant feedback values that I copied from other threads on this forum.

If you ignore feedback, the actual linking of VC elements to physical buttons/sliders is very simple- open the VC element properties and hit Auto Detect and then hit your physical button. Feedback Low value is when the button is unselected, high value is when the button is selected.

In the past I have used two APC Minis at the same time but unfortunately there are some bugs with QLC+ that cause them to patch improperly when loading a show file, and I have since moved away from using both Minis on one show file. If you need more buttons I suggest using a different device so that QLC patches them properly when reloading your show.

I also use frames with multiple pages, and I use the small side buttons to change pages. As long as every button in the frame has a counterpart on each page, and all of them have feedback settings sent, the feedback will auto update when the page is turned.

OH one more thing:
Each device and function in your show should have its own universe!! QLC has unlimited universes, use them. Each input device is its own universe, each output its own separate universe, and any feedback or other features on its own separate universe!

[rajones203]

Kind of related to this. Has anyone tried to put two apc minis into V5. Haven’t figured out how to make the feedback go to a different output destination. Am I overlooking something or has this been changed.

[Yestalgia]

Kind of related to this. Has anyone tried to put two apc minis into V5. Haven’t figured out how to make the feedback go to a different output destination. Am I overlooking something or has this been changed.

I managed to get this working by making a virtual midi device for each controller.

1. Get loopmidi
2. Create loop channels for each controller make sure the names are unique
3. Get midiox and setup the routes so that QLC+ can see a unique name for each controller