Is there a way to set knobs to a "disabled" state?

Hello! A module that I’m working on has an internal trigger “clock” consisting of an input, a knob, and a attenuation knob. It’s called the spawn rate. The module also has an external trigger input which overrides the internal trigger system for people who’d like more control over the spawn rate. The two options are outlined below:

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When a cable is inserted into the external trigger input, I’d like to make the other inputs appear disabled since they don’t don’t do anything that situation. Is this possible? If so, it would be helpful to see some example code to set a knob and input to “disabled”.

Thanks! Bret

Doing this would be poor UX, so I will not tell you how to do it. What if the user wants to adjust the spawn rate knob while the external trigger input is patched, so that when they unpatch it, their desired spawn rate is used?

What I’ve done in a few places, is to have a visual indication that a knob’s value is not being used. You could have a light which is illuminated when the knob is functioning and then goes out when you patch in a cable. The knob still works, but you can indicate to the user that it’s value isn’t doing anything while there’s a cable plugged in.

As Andrew suggests, this means that the position of the knob can still be meaningfully set by the user, and it will work from its new position when they unplug the cable.

in SEQ3 when you plug in an external clock the internal clock becomes non functional. nothing shows on the panel but it makes sense and a quick test verifies that to be the case. never felt I needed to be “shown” the the internal clock was disabled. only place of confusion I ever had was by pluggin the cable into the internal clock cv by mistake and then getting weird results.

Since I like to perform the rack live, I often operate controls while they do nothing audible, to have them in proper position when I enable them. I dunno if it makes sense with this module, but I could see myself, for example, using a dummy cable to bypass the spawn rate, turn the knobs, and remove the cable to enable it at the right moment.

I feel this horrific 20 seconds MSpaint job would be a better experience:

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Alternative UI metaphor suggestion:

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@Aria_Salvatrice - Agree your LED is a good way of showing which source is active

Another quick and rough take on the idea…

spawn

I love the ideas that everyone came up with! I agree that they’re a much better user experience. I think that I’ll adopt @steve 's strategy since it fits nicely on the front panel. Thanks again!!

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