Hey there, I have two X-Touch minis, one in a horizontal position and one vertical.  I've imported a template for the Fenix A320 which I want to go the horizontal one but it's going to the vertically mounted one, the only way I can get it to work is unplugging the vertical one before starting Axis and Oh's but I do not want to lose the functionally of the second unit.  I've tried the Reassign controls in the current config option and managed to transfer the assignments to the X-Touch I want but unfortunately the button lights do not work any more, they would switch on if that item was on in the aircraft but not now.  So it seems in the process it lost the scripting for the lights.

I really wish there was a option that just allowed you to swap everything from one Xtouch mini to the other in one click and I'm surprised and disappointed that's not available really.  So, is there another way to do this that keeps everything from the template intact but on the X-Touch mini of my choice?  I've already tried the channel priority option, that was no help, seems like I need a way to change the device ID perhaps?

It is not that easy...

Each XT has an IN and an OUT ID,. These IDs are unique for each device attached to the PC, they can change with no warning and they are different on every computer.

The template that you've downloaded was made for a local device that has MIDI IDs (IN and OUT) that are different from yours. That is normal.

What you need to do:

1. On the input side, after applying the template(s) to an aircraft config, reassign every button and encoder to the device where you want it (doubleclick, turn or press, apply). If you want to make a template of your own, use an empty config, apply the downloaded template, make the changes, then save as a new template.

2. On the output side, there should be a script that controls the LEDs for each template. So in your case there will be two. You need to find those and use the RPN script editor to replace the MIDI device ID with the OUT ID of the device where you want those LEDs to light up. 

3. Both of these LED scripts have then to be run as Aircraft Automated Scripts.

7 hours ago, White Hawk said:

that just allowed you to swap everything from one Xtouch mini to the other in one click and I'm surprised and disappointed that's not available really

Not sure that this can actually work. MIDI is a message based protocol. AAO doesn't know or care about the hardware that is sending the messages. It can't tell which XT is which, it just has those IDs to work with. So it will always be on you to find out what needs to go where. We can look into adding an additional dialog to swap MIDI IDs in an aircraft config or a template. But I'm not sure how useable or intuitive that can be.

Edited July 19, 20223 yr by Lorby_SI

Thanks for the reply, I had already transferred over one by one the assignments, and I’ve just now figured out how to edit the LED script to make it work by replacing all the MIDI: statements from 3 to 5 instead.

Thanks again but I do hope you will consider improving the handling of multiple of the same devices, at least the X-Touch minis so all this can be handled more easily.  I can’t say I know all the in’s and out’s of programming this software but with regards to the device ID’s and swapping templates from one to the other it would be great if they can be swapped regardless of ID’s being changed.  In fact ID’s being changed without notice is even more of a reason to have a one click swap between selected units so we don’t have to reassign each thing one by one if it happens.  You could assign numbers 1, 2, 3 etc to each plugged in unit regardless of the ID and then if they are wrong because the ID changed or a template went to the wrong unit allow us to pick which to move that to, maybe even flash one of the LED’s to identify each unit so we pick the right one first time.

These devices are cheap enough that using more than one like I have to use for more functions on different planes that this would be a nice usability feature for the software.

I'm sorry, I know what you want the software to do, but I see no way of doing it even "semi-automatically".

Again: AAO doesn't really know of any MIDI "device". It receives MIDI messages. Say these messages are coming from MIDI IN 3, and you assign them like that in AAO. Now you switch around the MIDI controllers, and Windows decides that another device has the "3" - AAO can't see the difference, messages are still being received from "3". How would the program know that something has changed?

I've put it on the list, and I will meditate a little bit about possible solutions. Like adapting the existing Hardware Change dialog, where you can replace entire joystick devices and MIDI IDs (only for controllers, not scripts), so you can do that on a single configuration or template. But I know from experience that these large scale replacements tend to go very wrong if applied incorrectly. If you as the user are not careful, you may be overwriting things that you didn't want to overwrite. Imagine you have MIDI In IDs 3 and 4, and you have assignments for both in your configuration - how do you propose to flip them, when all you have is the option to replace one ID with another? After the first step all IDs would be identical and you can't take the second step. So you would need some kind of dummy MIDI-ID that you can use in this scenario. And that is just the tip of the iceberg. 

But to be completely honest, priority to do this is relatively low. Your complaint is the first and only about this matter in 4 years and customer numbers well into the 4 digits. MIDI devices are only one small aspect of the software. But if it seems convenient to use and implementation effort is manageable, it will be done.
 

 

Edited July 20, 20223 yr by Lorby_SI

OK, so I looked into this. In the next version of AAO you will have the option to change a MIDI ID for the elemtens of a template or a configuration, and you can choose which assignments shall be affected. This goes for all controller types, so you can also move joystick assignments to a different joystick. But the reassignment is only possible between devices of the same type, you cannot assign a joystick to things that were MIDI etc.

So you can then import a template, make two copies of it, edit each copy and replace the MIDI IN - ID with one of your own hardware suite. 

The existing "Hardware-Hardware Change" dialog remains unchanged. It allows you to replace joystick and MIDI IDs on a global scale (= in the entire AAO database).

Hey there, once again, I don’t know how all the programming of this goes and I’d have to have a look at this new functionality once it’s out but thank you for taking the time and effort to look into it and it sounds like a really good step to make it easier to deal with this issue so I do appreciate that.  I know not everyone knows about using these midi devices for flight sim use but I feel like that’s only going to increase so helping dummies like me set these things up a bit easier is great. 😁

Thanks again.

19 hours ago, White Hawk said:

I don’t know how all the programming of this goes

I didn't write about the programming either. I was trying to explain how MIDI works, and that it is technologically impossible to fulfill your request for reassigning things on a per-device level. I can only offer a bit of helper logic.

MIDI is the Musical Instruments Digital Interface, established around 1980. It was never intended for flightsim controllers. The MIDI protocol doesn't care about hardware, the messages (=musical notes!) that it is transporting, don't contain any info about the device that sent them. That's just how it is, and no amount of programming will change it. It will ultimately always fall on the user to figure out what IN/OUT IDs belong to which device and what assignment needs to go where.

Edited July 21, 20223 yr by Lorby_SI

On 7/21/2022 at 7:06 AM, Lorby_SI said:

I didn't write about the programming either. I was trying to explain how MIDI works, and that it is technologically impossible to fulfill your request for reassigning things on a per-device level. I can only offer a bit of helper logic.

MIDI is the Musical Instruments Digital Interface, established around 1980. It was never intended for flightsim controllers. The MIDI protocol doesn't care about hardware, the messages (=musical notes!) that it is transporting, don't contain any info about the device that sent them. That's just how it is, and no amount of programming will change it. It will ultimately always fall on the user to figure out what IN/OUT IDs belong to which device and what assignment needs to go where.

I think you misinterpreted what I meant, I know all about that, I just didn’t want you do assume I was being a know it all about your program is all, just hoped something could be done to make a two Xtouch setup easier.

Thanks again.