Float Menu

The ZOIA has no menu module. This patch makes one from five modules, so you can copy it into your own patches.

The page shows one button. Press it and the options appear — three here. Without a menu you would put them on another page and turn to it mid-song.

Load it, turn to page 2, and read along.

Playing it

Press Menu. Three options appear above it. Tap one and it registers as the selected choice; the menu closes. Menu takes its colour, and the big digit shows its number.

Pressing Menu again while the menu is open closes it without selecting anything. That is easy to change so a second press picks a default instead — see the note at the end.

The three tricks

Hiding the options until the menu opens. A button whose LED is off can still be pressed, so nothing needs disconnecting. Opening the menu only adds brightness.

Stopping a press from doing anything while the menu is closed. Use a multiplier: the press goes in one input, the open state in the other. Menu shut, the open state is 0, and anything times 0 is 0.

Telling which of the three options was pressed, with one Sample & Hold. Wire each button into the hold's input at a different connection strength. The value it captures identifies the button. The first one needs no wire at all — nothing arriving is already 0.

The five modules

Page 2, in reading order.

FF Open — a flip flop storing whether the menu is open. The launcher flips it. Its output lights the three options at 3.228%, and goes to the multiplier.

Press Choice — a multiplier. The three buttons arrive at full on one input, the open state on the other. Its output triggers the hold, and flips FF Open back off, which closes the menu.

Choice SH — a sample and hold. The buttons sit on its input at their own strengths; when the multiplier triggers it, it captures whichever one is pressed and keeps it.

Current Color — an in switch holding the three colours. The captured value picks one, and it goes to Menu.

Current Num — an out switch. The captured value picks which of its three outputs carries a signal; each one lights the pixels of a digit. This is the one you replace — wire each output to what that option should do.

The colours

Page 1 holds five constants. A button's colour is the value arriving at it, so a colour is just a number: Mango 0.10, Green 0.25, Blue 0.45. Each is the bottom of its band, which is the colour with the light off. Bright is what turns it on.

They sit in a column so one edit re-colours every button that reads them.

A player can turn an option cell's value, and it sums with the CV, so the constants cannot cancel it. Save after that and the wrong colour is saved too. Pushbutton has no parameter to turn, at the cost of CV-driven colour.

Copying it

1. Point your launcher at FF Open.
2. Wire FF Open to each option button at 3.228%.
3. Wire every option button into Press Choice at full, and all but the first into Choice SH at a different strength each.
4. Wire the outputs of Current Num to what the menu is for.

For a fourth option: one more button, one more strength, one more slot on each switch. The strengths just need to be far enough apart for the switch to land on the right slot.

To make a second press pick a default instead of just closing the menu: add a logic AND with the launcher on one input and the open state on the other. It only goes high when you press the launcher while the menu is open. Use it to trigger Choice SH, which then captures 0 — the first option.