Electra One firmware sources

Developers
21

it worked fine when I tried it … otherwise I wouldn’t have posted here :wink:

the e1 firmware and toolchains can change, so its always possible that things become mis-aligned at times.

I’ve not been compiling the E1 code recently, as Ive been waiting for it to ‘settle down’ again. as it was going thru some pretty major changes, and didn’t want to have to keep updating my own source code to follow it.

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22

Yeah, saw that there is a 3.0 coming. Before I really start investing time into the project, I wait until that is released.

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23

The idea is to make the Midi Controller application (the one we all are using) just another application that runs on the base firmware foundation. When that point is reached, I will claim the base firmware to be mature enough for developing other apps. Many people are currently helping me to get things right, I think we are getting close to that point…

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24

Is E1 still open source? The last commit at ElectraOne · GitHub is from 2024-09-09. I’m wondering if it’s a delay or a policy change.

25

The Electra One mk1 firmware is open source and we keep it that way. That is what you have seen on the github. Electra One mk2 was introduced at the time of the global electronic components shortage. At that time, we had to change the main CPU on a very short notice to be able to keep the project alive. To do so, we used Renesas SSP libraries in the mk2 firmware sources (the base USB stack, SDRAM, etc). These have proprietary license that does not allow us to simple share it on github,

We are getting rid of these libraries replacing them with our own implementation. Kind of step by step when there is time for that. But as there was almost no interest the firmware sources, we spend more time on improving the Lua API that allows building quite complex presets without modifying the base firmware.

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26

People do care about source availability, even if they don’t actively contribute. Even as a purchase criteria, as it was for me.

Thanks for the explanation and good to hear it is being worked on :+1:
There are always priorities and only so many days in a week :sweat_smile:

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27

Thanks for the explanation. That makes sense about licensing.

I found sd-4.0.zip, the preset library, and the API docs. I looked at the Lua code for your generative sequencer and the Ableton Live script by JHH. Yes, you can do a lot with the existing API!

It might be convenient to have: 1) the API source, with or without function implementations; 2) the docs in original .md form; 3) the web editor source.

In the end I’m not sure about a purchase. I only have one unit that really needs the 6x6 dispatch mode. However, I spent some time investigating so here is my feedback. I hope it helps!

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28

I would love to see this come back! I have an Electra One Mini for use with my own custom software Simularca and I would love to be able to completely customise how the control scheme works since my use case is quite distinct. It just arrived today so I’ll try first with Lua to see how far I get with that

29

Hi,

I am currently traveling and often away from the internet. Hance the slower communication. The important info here is that all my efforts go now into preparing E1 firmware (mk1 / mk 2 / mini) for being opensource. it is one of the main priorities now as I see it as the most rational step for the project to progress further.

Cheers,
Martin

4 Likes
30

@martin - thank you for such a quick reply! I’ve been having fun with my Electra One Mini. I couldn’t see a video upload option here so I made a little YouTube short:

What would be amazing to have in future Lua API:

  • Custom controls (i.e. be able to replace the CC control with something completely custom, with custom signaling and display)
  • Some way of making a Lua action happen on a button press (not sure why by this seems difficult at the moment)
  • Larger fonts available (Ideally 4 font sizes)
  • Polygon rendering (e.g. draw a filled polygon)

Of course, if it was open source then I could add these things myself :). Also maybe get a bit more performance out of the device by coding things natively / using bitmaps instead of polygons, etc. In general I don’t really need it to work with anything other than my own software, and I’d like to have 100% control over how the device works, but I think there’d also be a happy in-between of adding extensions to the Lua API and using those in my own presets.

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31

Here is the lua script (inside of the plugin) for reference:
export function buildSurfaceLua(

I haven’t yet been able to figure out how to assign the 4 custom buttons to functions in my own preset yet, but I see there are some notes in the forum about presets that have this working so I’ll look into these more.

Edit: got the buttons working with JX-3P (Organix Mod) preset as reference

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