Ok, if you wondered why it was so silent here… here it comes.
When I saw all the feature requests coming in and when I looked at my available time I decided to take a step back and thought about how to resolve it. After having a brief talk with @thetechnobear I decided to give priority to a work that I was originally planning to do in far future.
The lastest firmware (links below) brings Lua scripting language to Electra. it comes in two flavours:
- the Preset Lua extension (Preset Lua extension | Electra One Documentation)
- The standalone Lua (Electra One Lua script | Electra One Documentation)
The Preset Lua extension is the main thing and it is a continuation of the Electra as we know it now. It brings possiblity to extend the declarative preset JSON with function calls and event handling with Lua. I think it is a very powerful combo where you can define the initial preset state with the JSON and use Lua for doing the work that would be hard to describe in JSON. This basically opens the field for customers SysEx parsers, value formatting, MIDI LFOs, Dynamic changes of the preset layout.
I hope this will unblock @andersskibsted and @rhawtin with their bitwig work. Essentially it should make integration with other DAWs easy. And I hope it will also help the @thetechnobear orac integration.
The standalone Lua is goes even further. It requires a special firmware to be loaded.This firmware exposes Electra’s internal API and allows the developers to write their own Electra One application.
Of course, this is the first beta release that brings Lua. So, it is far from perfect. I strongly suggest that only people who are willing to experiment, test, mess around will use it now. I would love if you guys came with the feedback on the API that I suggested and described in the documentation. I am ready to adjust anything so that we will find a perfect match for all of us.
I have also took some time to update the development docs. The SysEx implementation | Electra One Documentation has been updated and quite some stuff was added to Electra’s Github repository repository. Mostly demo scripts. I will keep adding more examples there.
It is worth mentioning that I have decided to release my nightly builds. I did not like the prolonged periods without the releases and feedback. The snapshots of my work will be available on the Downloads page and the there is also a new Change log page.
Last important bit, @akira basically took over the Electra One Console development. I am very thankful for that and the app is already way better than it was so far.
To get the latest beta firmrware, visit Electra One firmware | Electra One Documentation and scroll down do public betas.
To get the latest version of the ElectraOne Console, which is needed to flash the beta firmware, visit Management applications | Electra One Documentation and scroll down for betas.
the changelog of the latest beta is available at Nightly builds | Electra One Documentation
Again, do not expect 100% stable thing. I wanted to make a kick off to get the communication going.
PS: thanks to @shankar for giving it the first test ride and making the very first Electra user application ever 