I just started with zynthian on a brand new Raspi 4 B with the official power supply. I planned to play with it headless before I buy the set. But I have a tough time exploring the features, because all of the clicks or “touches” in the VNC UI lead to completely different actions. E.g. clicking on “audio levels” shortly highlights that menu item but then “layers” is opened! I can use the arrow keys to navigate, but no matter where I click it just selects/opens what currently is highlighted.
I then wanted to disable VNC in order to try X11: Disabling VNC in webconf and clicking “save” always activates VNC again. It’s not possible to disable it.
Ok, then to X11: I managed to see the zynthian UI on my Windows PC, can click once or twice and then the X Server freezes (I tried two). I had to kill the X server processes in order to close the window.
Btw. I did plenty of restarts and I updated all software. This behaviour is reproducable on all my devices (Windows, Android, Chrome OS).
I still hope I missed something obvious. Do you have any ideas or advice?
Precisely how i it all set up?
I’ve seen similar when driving Zynthian derived vnc with a mouse, touch on vnc may be similarly derived.
The ‘solution’ is ensure that the cursor and the highlight are located on the same select-able entity. I think one looks active but the other selects or something similar.
That way you will be ‘fairly’ confident you’ve got the right selection.
Hopefully this is relevant or nothing more than something I should have reported when I first worked out a solution.
Can you try with an hdmi monitor ( if you have access to one)? and try with a mouse plugged into the PI and see how well behaved it is.
Welcome to the community. You have already encountered our most demanding member so it is all plain sailing and fun from here on! (You will find out about his demands later - I am sure…)
You have experienced a bug in the current (stable) version whereby clicking anywhere on the screen selects the currently highlighted item. You may work around this by using the computer keyboard.
The simplest way to access the UI remotely is via webconf INTERFACE->VNC-UI. This presents the Zynthian user interface within the web browser. Driving Zynthian with touch / mouse can be challenging. Some of the interface does not work well. I prefer to use the computer keyboard.
X-forwarding is not advised. It seems to have a much larger overhead than VNC and the instructions to use it are now obsolete. (If they remain on the wiki they should be removed - let me know where you saw that.)
Wow, before I could even say thank you for your quick replies, you’ve already fixed it! Amazing, thank you!
I have updated the software, and now it works better. But still long and bold clicks do not work. I have to touch and move the finger over the screen towards the target item. And then the time before lifting the finger determines, whether a regular, bold or long “click” is triggered. It’s not possible to directly touch an item, hold it for the “bold” or “long” period and then lift it.
It works using a mouse, but not using touch input devices. I tried the no vnc web client as well as a native Android VNC client. I tried it on Windows, Chromeos and Android.
By the way, after the update every patch I loaded had a portamento effect. I then opened the portamento setting of an arbitrary patch and the on/off control had “Err” as its value. I could change that value to “off” and after that, all patches were working normally again. Is this a “glitch” or should this be documented as another bug?
Touchscreen devices often have their own layer of handling touch, e.g. Windows 10 work will interpret a long touch in a particular way. I’m not sure we can do much about this. It is certainly frustrating to have to move your finger a little after landing it.
Ok, I see. I guess I’ll get around using mouse/keyboard when configuring zynthian and setting up MIDI commands to control it from a MIDI controller live.
I’ve found plugging the mouse into the zynth, turning on the cursor then using vnc in read only mode is the most reliable configuration. Does require you to be near the zynth but that kind f makes sense a lot of the time.
I find using keyboard / mouse on the client machine connected via VNC is fine. Touch (with some OS) on the client machine is flawed as described above.
so it is all plain sailing and fun from here on! (You will find out about his demands later - I am sure…)