Glad it helped. Although those preset buttons shouldn’t stay lit. I think you might be running into the same issue as I am. Unless there is a gap in between notes Photon has an issue.
As a solution I created a MIDI “global” in my sending application (OnSong) to turn off all MIDI Messages (essentially a list of all potential MIDI messages I’m using with a value = 0). This way I can issue a single “MIDI global” to clear all the buttons that appear to be stuck on in Photon2. Or, I could pre-pend every one of my MIDI commands with this global to issue a clear before issuing a new command. Not perfect, but effective. You can see a video of how it works below:
1 Like
New problem found. When Photon is running in the background in Live mode it appears to crash after my Midi source application (OnSong) sends between 11 to 14 commands (this is repeatable). However, if I keep Photon on the screen and overlay OnSong (so I can see both) it never crashes. Also, it seems the crashes only occur during a sequence, not a static preset. I’m running iOS 15.2.1.
Video here: Photon crash after 12 midi msgs while in background
Hello all, I also use Onsong and have very much enjoyed Photon 2… Super stable and user friendly!! I am wondering how the Midi functionality is coming along? It would be great to have the scenes trigger automatically from Onsong for our outdoor events. I am hoping to purchase a second copy for my Church lighting system, however midi functionality is important as we would like to trigger scenes from ProPresenter 7. Thanks for all you do!
Jason
Hi everybody !
Thank you very much for all this very important feedbacks. We have a lot of bugs to fix before releasing a new version for the MIDI feature. I bought On Song and we will try to fix this crashes. Then, we notice that we are listening the same MIDI input twice, so you can receive the double MIDI events.
I can’t give you a date for the moment, but we are working on it.
@Chewy thank you very much, I’m very happy to notice that you like Photon. The MIDI feature will be released soon 
1 Like
Thanks for the update!
New TestFlight version build 2303 ! We fixed lots of bugs :
- Display good notes and octave for “keys” controls. For others controls (continuous controllers, pitch…) it will display its number and its value. Thank you @DavidO.
- OnSong, by default, sends MIDI events on network input and virtual inter app. @mchrysoc that why you will received events twice and the buttons momentarily “flash”. Now, in the Photon settings popup you can select the MIDI input sources (I recommend to use inter app only if you are using another iPad to sends MIDI events)
- @DavidO, normally you can start the Cubasis and Photon applications in any order. Also, there should be no more problems with blocked mapping.
- @DavidO, the emission of 2 notes in the same time is now ok. The 2nd note will not gets stuck on.
- Others minors bugs
I will add an event logger in the MIDI mapping view to help diagnose possible configuration problems. Thanks for the idea @DavidO
Let us know if you continue to notice other bugs, I think there are still some but we will fix them for the final version.
Thanks again for your help, it is essential to be compatible with all your devices and applications.
Enjoy !
1 Like
Thanks for the new release. I’ll have a chance to try it out next week.
1 Like
Thanks for the quick response. I will try it this weekend!
1 Like
I ran a quick test and it still crashed after approximately 12 midi messages. Before I started the test I chose Inter-App for the midi configuration (because OnSong and Photon are running on the same iPad) but after it crashed and restarted it came up in an odd mode with Inter-App Only highlighted but All Sources check marked.
Update: I also tested with midi setting USB and Network and I also got a crash, but it seemed to take 24 messages. More testing needed….
Ho no…. Are you sure you tried in Live Mode this time ? Can you enable notifications p’tit Photon, you will received a popup before the app quit (if it is not a bug). The app is running in background only 2minutes (a notification appear after 1min50) if the live mode is not active
would like to test the MIDI feature.
anyone tried with Fractal Audio FM3 MidiOut yet?
1 Like
I created a new video (sorry it’s handheld so we can see both the iPad and the actual lighting responding). At the beginning you can see I’m in Live Mode. You can forward to the 2 minute point in the video when the 20th MIDI message causes Photon to stop (the microphone icon and the Photon icon in the upper corner disappear). I then go back and have to relaunch Photon.
Photon Crashing after 20th MIDI msg
When Photon is running:
When Photon stops running:
Thank you, we are trying to understand why you obtain the « normal mode » behavior while you are in Live mode.
Very strange… thank you again for the video.
Thanks for all the time you’ve put in on this. I ran an additional test and ONLY used MIDI to trigger static presets (not sequences). I was able to send 60+ messages to trigger presets and no issues. However, once I started using MIDI to trigger sequences, after a few minutes Photon crashed in the background. It always occurs when it receives the next MIDI message while playing a sequence. Almost seems like a race condition between Photon cycling through the steps of a sequence and trying to process incoming MIDI messages. Hope this helps…
Thank you for this analysis. Can you please send me an export of your Photon show by private message ? You can do it by touching « select », select the show then touch « share » button.
I will try to reproduce with your data.
Ok thank, with your show’s export I reproduced the problem. Unfortunately this is a much more complicated problem to correct than expected, this is not related to the MIDI but to the overall consumption of Photon in the background. Indeed, the processes are too greedy and iOS kills the app to not consume too much. We have to do a deep work to optimize the code so that it consumes less in this case. We will work on it and keep you updated on the development. Thank you for your analysis and the share of your show.
This brings up a related question. Does Photon had a minimum hardware specification for an Ipad? My 1st gen Ipad Pro runs the current IpadOS but I’m worried it’s might not be powerful enough to run Photon in the background while running Cubasis or Multitracker.
Photon is a resource intensive app because it has to handle a lot of communication protocols (ArtNet, sACN, Hue) and make many operations (Audio analysis, light layers calculation, …)
But don’t worried, your first gen iPad Pro must work with Photon. We have to improve the algorithms so that the app consumes less power and can work in the background.
Apple restricts consumption in the background.
We are working on it now and it is well on the way.
1 Like
Thanks for the update!