Spoiler Alert: A Hemisphere Suite 1.2 Preview

Hemisphere Suite 1.2 will be released on Friday, July 27th. My plan is to add new applets fairly regularly through the end of the summer; but Friday's release goes a little beyond that, with some fairly big changes to the framework itself. So I wanted to introduce those changes a little before the release.

As always, the hex file will be available here: https://github.com/Chysn/O_C-HemisphereSuite/releases.

The Help Screens Are Moving

I didn't like the way the Help Screens worked. You had to long-press the left encoder, then long-press it again to go to the next hemisphere, then long-press it again to get back to the main screen. All this long-pressing was inelegant.

I've introduced a double-click action to the Up and Down buttons. It's pretty much like double-clicking a mouse button, expecting about a half second between the first press and the second press. The Help Screens are now activated with a double-click of the corresponding button (Up for left hemisphere and Down for right). Once you're at a Help Screen, you can simply click same button again to get out of Help, or click the opposite button to see the other Help Screen. You can switch back and forth this way as many times as you like.

The Help Screens still have no effect on an applet's operation, which was an important consideration for me. Applets still function, and you can still control them in the blind.

Help Screen Video (YouTube)

Clock Forwarding Is Moving

I wanted the Up/Down buttons to centralize operations having to do with applet management, so I moved the Clock Forwarding control to the left encoder, where the Help Screen control used to be. In all other respects, it's exactly the same.

Clock Forwarding Video (YouTube)

Category Filtering Is Coming

At about 30 applets, it started becoming kind of annoying to flip through them all. So Hemisphere Suite 1.2 introduces a category filtering system, which allows you to restrict the types of applets you see.

To enter the Categories Screen, first activate Selection Mode by clicking on the Up or Down button. Then, long-press the Down button. When you release it, the Categories Screen will be displayed in the selected hemisphere. Use the corresponding encoder to choose a category (they are, off the top of my head, Modulator, Sequencer, Quantizer, Clocking, Utility, MIDI, Audio, and Other) or ALL. Then press the corresponding Up or Down button again.

Now, when you scroll through available applets in that hemisphere, you'll see only applets assigned to the chosen category. Each hemisphere can have a different category selected. These categories are not remembered when state is saved.

Category Filtering Video (YouTube)

I hope you all enjoy the new features! The dust should be settling on the interface after this. Hemisphere 1.2 has some new applets, too, including a Burst Generator and Comparator,