HID input Delay?

jd's picture

Hi gang! Am putting a simple comp together for our drummer to be able to trigger Sound FX/DMX light hits/Midi to Ableton etc.etc. from a Guitar Hero drumset. All is very good, and I have it working from a Playstation Kit also (they are VERY similar in their HID outputs) Super convenient and super cheap way to add basic triggering to an acoustic kit. (Garage sale, $10 each)

Problem: after (about) 5 minutes of non-use, it seems to go into a quasi-sleep mode, by which I mean - you can trigger anywhere on the kit and QC does not seem to recognize the hit for upwards of a second and a half. After that one late-hitting trigger, all is good and very, very responsive - (almost as good a a Midi kit, just no velocity :( and works great with very little latency - until you let the whole rig sit for a few minutes again...

Have done a super-stripped down version w/just audio file player and HID input and still get the same results. What I am triggering seems to be immaterial, get the same results with video/dmx/audio/Midi trigger.

Have also tried putting a timer that cycles/refreshes the audio file player to enable/disable when it hasn't been triggered in X while, but no love there either.

Is this a system thing, (QC priority??)or an HID input patch thing? BTW Screen savers/virus/energy saver disabled.

Any ideas on a workaround?

thanks!!! jd

krrkt's picture
Re: HID input Delay?

Hi jd,

I got no fix for you, but maybe workaround. As you mentioned after 5 min of non-use it goes to sleep, and you tried keeping the connection alive with a timer. The timer must not be triggering anything active enough to get it out of 'non-use' mode. There should be a grey zone there which you can explore, what is the smallest signal that will keep it active? Maybe a silent note you can hit, or a mute - trigger - unmute function?

just my 2 cents

jochem

krrkt's picture
Re: HID input Delay?

Oops, you would need to be able to send some kind of signal to the device aswell. Like some controllers can receive, but don't think that's supported by HID Input

jrs's picture
Re: HID input Delay?

You could use one of these to auto trigger

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yk71GY02diY

franz's picture
Re: HID input Delay?

IDK about guitar hero controller, but I use a PS3 controller a lot, and these go to sleep mode automatically after 7 minutes of non-use, in prder to save its battery charge. On a PS3 controller, all you have to do is to press the Home button to wake up the device. The actual connection is not lost, it's just the device that sleeps. hope this helps, frz

jd's picture
Re: HID input Delay?

I bet that's it! I have never noticed this with other HID stuff so I bet that is the right track.

The home button is what I already have mapped to a "kill everything/blackout switch" so that will be dandy.

thanks!! cheers! jd

BTW - thanks for the bird video, I haven't thought about those in a long time, they are still cool.