Midifighter Twister - Firmware - No update since August 2014
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  1. #1
    Tech Wizard
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    Default Midifighter Twister - Firmware - No update since August 2014

    Hey Stewe and Dj Tech Tools staff.

    Back on 03-04-2016, 08:45 AM, we were told (Stewe) that "...working on it...will keep you posted...". Because you told us to wait for a cure, we did. This hasn't happened, we still are waiting on an update for over a year.

    Crying that "we are a small team" whilst promising us "something is coming" only makes your paying customers sit in blind hope whilst something may never come. If you cannot meet the demands of your community, just be honest with us and say so. Please stop making bullshit promises that you cannot live up to and telling us you can fix it if you can't. We just need to know honestly if it will ever be fixed or now. We can deal with it if you cant, we just want to know if it's realistically possible. We are paying customers, but beyond that we are capable of being told that there is no fix coming and can circumvent inevitabilities.

    There are some serious and well established defects with the current firmware (eg midi sync issues), nobody is expecting these are easy to fix. But please be honest with us and stop sticking the "a fix is coming" thumb up our asses. You could pay us a little more respect by saying something like "it's too hard for us to find a fix right now" or "our business needs to focus on other areas" or whatever other understandable reason is making it too hard to fix - we know that these things are sometimes hard to fix.

    Please stop feeding us bullshit and lies, when we are the community that built you up and purchased your products.

  2. #2
    Tech Convert
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    Or just make the Midi Fighter Twister firmware open source!

    This is the third thread about the Twister firmware bugs and still no offical date when the firmware update will come - and some bugs are easy to fix,so they can start with those.

    Best advice for everyone: Don't buy any Midifighter Twister before a new firmware is released!

  3. #3
    Mr. Golden EanGolden's Avatar
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    Hey Noofny,

    I felt it was important to address this directly, and honestly. You are absolutely right, updates to the Twister have taken too long and we need to fix that - quickly! I'm personally going to make it a priority to address this and make sure everyone feels heard, and their problems fixed.

    A small background on why this has taken so long

    Last year, in order to save money and not go under - we had to let go of our full time engineers. This meant that all software development ended while we looked for freelance engineers to continue the product updates.

    The bottom line is that we just need to hire a good engineer to work on the code base or find other creative ways to get the bugs fixed.

    Psyko - Your suggestion is great, and I agree - but would anyone actually use and update an open source firmware? The original MF code was open source but almost no-one worked on the code.

    To everyone else - any introductions or ideas for good firmware engineers who can help us continue MF twister development would be really appreciated

    Practically speaking, here is a timeline you can count on:

    We will find someone and get the bugs updated in the next 30 days. That feels like a reasonable deadline, and something which we can make happen. If anyone wants to add things to this thread that are most important to you, that would be very appreciated.

    As always, thank you for the support and patience. Dj TechTools grew out of my passion to help other djs and it's made possible by the contributions of everyone from this community.

    Ean Golden
    Last edited by EanGolden; 05-16-2016 at 01:15 PM.

  4. #4
    Tech Wizard
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    Thanks Ean, for both jumping into this but for finally sharing some transparency on the issue, your honesty is really appreciated.

    It's interesting to know that you tried going open source but nobody jumped on it, I guess being such a niche product most users are probably happier making music than writing code. Being a software engineer myself I'm way keen to help where I can and have some questions for you;

    1) Where did you try hosting the code and how did you promote it's awareness within coding communities?
    2) What language is the code and how clean/messy would you say it currently is?
    3) What are your thoughts about crowdsourcing the work, eg bountify.co, guru.com, etc?

    As for what is most important, I only have 2 things;
    - Fix the bug whereby the pulsing/flashing animation does not sync to incoming MIDI.
    - Most settings can be changed via MIDI CC but some settings can only be changed via the Midifigher Utility. It would be great to be able to set an encoder's detent settings, sensitivity and indicator type via MIDI CC (or document how to do it by sending SYSEX *without* the device having to do a restart).
    Last edited by noofny; 04-13-2016 at 06:04 AM. Reason: Forgot to add something!

  5. #5
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    Hello Ean,

    thanks for the informative reply - new firmware in 30 days sounds great!

    As I have some programming skills as well (but beeing no professional) I would be interested in writing my own firmware (for my special needs - using the Twister as a Davinci Resolve controller). And I can think of many other applications where the well designed Twister would be a perfect fit, but need special firmware. (C code and a tool to upload the firmware would be perfect - something like the Arduino IDE).

    Most importen bugs (to me):
    1) The LEDs can't be controlled by incoming MIDI as long as the encoder is used. The Twister ignores all incoming LED controll MIDI messages for about 0.2 seconds after any event related to the encoder, even in Enc 3FH/41H mode.
    2) (see noofny) Certain settings like detent, sensitivity, indicator type,... can't be controlled by MIDI CC (and need a restart of the Twister).

  6. #6
    Mr. Golden EanGolden's Avatar
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    Hey Gents,

    Thank you for the detailed information - particularly around what we can improve. It's clear what needs to be done and we can probably knock out the main things pretty quickly.

    To answer your questions:

    1. What state is the code in? It appears to be well commented and organized
    2. What language is it written in? C/C++

    @noofny - feel free to reach out to me directly ean (At) dj techtools.com and perhaps we can find a way to get you involved with the fixes!


    Finally, thank you both (and to everyone else) for vocally and directly voicing these issues and bringing them to my attention. With your help, we can hopefully make the midi fighters even better products.

    E

  7. #7
    Tech Mentor
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    Hi,

    I am one of the few people who (publicly) tinkered with the open source midifighter code to mod the hardware: http://forum.djtechtools.com/showthread.php?t=28014 and http://forum.djtechtools.com/showthr...t=23597&page=3 and photo: http://i56.tinypic.com/16bass7.jpg
    I was also the person who implemented the initial version of the SysEx-based configuration and the first (ugly , DJTT made it much prettier later) version of the utility.

    I'd be willing to help out.

    Now, what I can do is probably going to be quite limited (I don't own a Twister, I have a lot less time on my hands now, and I haven't done any firmware development in a few years (and will have to see if I can find my atmel development tools...)), but I would be happy to help regardless. I'm not sure if the Twister codebase is based on the MF/MF Pro/MF3D code -- if its not, I probably won't be able to help much -- but if it is, I can at least help somebody else familiarise themselves with the code, explain how the SysEx stuff works etc (although I imagine I'll need to familiarise myself with the code, since I'm sure its evolved since I last saw it).

    Ean: I'd be willing to sign an NDA if you wish to keep the code closed source.

    I'd also be happy to actually fix bugs or make other smallish changes (if its even possible without a Twister), but as I said, my time is limited so I wouldn't be able to commit to any specific timelines or anything

    Still, let me know if there's something I can do to help.
    Last edited by guywithknife; 04-22-2016 at 08:18 PM.

  8. #8
    Tech Convert
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    Found another bug (thats driving me crazy):

    When the encoder is in 3FH/41H mode and you turn it slowly the MF Twister sometimes (randomly) sends both step right (65) and step left (63) CC signals at the same time, instead of only the one signal corresponding to the direction.

    Some programms ignore parts of those contradicting messages, which when turning the encoder backwards with higher speed results in random offsets from the start position.

    I'm not sure if its a software problem (the Twister sending those wrong values due to a bug) or if its a hardware problem (the pulsencoder sitting exactly between two values unable to decide which is correct).

  9. #9
    Newbie
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    Quote Originally Posted by EanGolden View Post
    Hey Gents,

    Thank you for the detailed information - particularly around what we can improve. It's clear what needs to be done and we can probably knock out the main things pretty quickly.

    To answer your questions:

    1. What state is the code in? It appears to be well commented and organized
    2. What language is it written in? C/C++

    @noofny - feel free to reach out to me directly ean (At) dj techtools.com and perhaps we can find a way to get you involved with the fixes!


    Finally, thank you both (and to everyone else) for vocally and directly voicing these issues and bringing them to my attention. With your help, we can hopefully make the midi fighters even better products.

    E
    Hello,

    I am pretty sure if you just put your source code on GitHub.com, there would be at least one person who'd happily help you to at least fix the bugs. It really takes just a single person...

  10. #10
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    Default Som bugs I have constant problems with

    Hello guys!
    Maybe this is the right place to write it. A few months ago I wrote a message to support but it was totally ignored with no answer.

    My complaints are about just the basic functionality - the sync between Midi Fighter Utility and my Twister.

    The bug which makes me mad angry is that sometimes when I set a new colours setup or change anything in MFU and send it to the MF, it COMPLETELY messes up my midi numbers which I want to stay as they are (1-64 stepwise). Then it of course completely messes my midi mappings in Ableton, because eg. the knob sending cc23 before is now sending some random different number (mostly they change to 64). Then I have to check all the midi numbers and set them manually again and again. I have done it for many times always with a big frustration.

    Beside that there are some other bugs, such as sometimes one colour randomly changes with no reason or MFU crashes, or does not load the current state of the device correctly.

    I would also very appreciate selecting multiple knobs with SHIFT rather than having to click every knob manually and de-click it afterwards and I agree with guys above about being available to control more funtions via midi from Ableton rather than via buggy MFU.

    To be honest I use MF Twister with USB hub when on stage which isn't recommended, BUT I never make changes in setup and any syncing through USB hub, I always stick it directly to my macbook when connecting to MidiFighter Utility. (When performing, I have simply no way to avoid usb hub, since my macbook pro has only 2 slots and my whole live gear contains 6 usb devices, isn't it a quite usual situation for all live performers? I have bought dLink powered hub - DUB H7 recommended here on DJTT in the related article)

    Anyone can help how to solve this problems? I'd be really very happy if the new firmware solved these essential bugs.

    My setup:
    Macbook pro 2011
    Ableton 9.6. legit
    Focusrite saffire pro 40

    Thanks

    Michal

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