Volco v1.4

🎚️ Volco 1.4

The Controls and Hardware pages are now one Controller page. You see what each control does and how it's wired, and you save both together. Sliders whose pots never reach the ends now calibrate themselves and go all the way from 0 to 100 %. New wiring helpers find a control's pin when you move or press it, find the screens on a bus, and try a button's lights. Slider and button feel settings are simpler, and each one lives in one place.

⚠️ Firmware update needed. This release comes with new controller firmware. When the controller connects, Volco shows Firmware update available. Click Update and your setup stays on the controller.

Your settings are converted automatically on first start, and the old file is kept as config.v7.bak. Hold and double-press timings carry over from your first button. If you had a slider reversed, turn on Reverse direction for it again. That setting now lives on the controller and isn't carried over.

📦 What's in the box

File	What it is
Volco.exe	The app. One self-contained file for Windows 10/11 (x64), with nothing to install. It carries the matching controller firmware inside it.
volco-firmware-esp32-1.4.zip	The same firmware on its own, for flashing with your own tools, plus its licence notices and the LGPL relink bundle. Most people won't need it.

✨ New

🎛️ One Controller page

• The sidebar has two pages: General and Controller. The Controller page draws your controller, with + Add, Controller settings and Test above it.
• Tiles show what each control does. A wiring problem gets a red outline and a warning mark, on both controls when two of them clash.
• The panel beside the drawing has two parts: Controls (or Actions), then Hardware. Hardware holds the pins, the light or screen, and Remove. It always starts at the same height, so it doesn't jump when you click from tile to tile.
• Settings look like Windows Settings: grouped cards, with a ? next to any setting that needs explaining.
• Hardware changes are a draft. An amber bar across the top of the drawing counts them, and Save sends them to the controller. Removing a control shifts Volco's settings so the controls after it keep what they do.
• Leaving the page or closing the window with unsaved changes asks first: save, discard, or stay.
• I2C buses are under Controller settings › Screens, in their own dialog. A screen button links to its bus.
• There's a Volco PCB preset with the board's pin map, ready to pick in the setup chooser.

🚦 Controller status

• When all is well, you see one line at the bottom of the sidebar ("Connected"), with the chip and counts under it. Click it for Connection, Reconnect, Disconnect, Check firmware, Reinstall, Load a preset and Start over.
• When the controller needs you, a banner appears at the top of every page with the one button that fixes it.
• Firmware installs, updates, checks and saves run in a progress window that tells you not to unplug the controller and ends with what to do next. Exit waits for them to finish.
• A blank ESP32 is recognised. Check firmware says it doesn't have Volco's firmware yet and offers Install firmware.

📏 Slider calibration

• Auto-calibrate (on by default) learns each slider's real ends as you use it, so a pot that reads only part of its range still reaches 0 and 100 %.
• Re-calibrate opens a dialog with a live bar: push the slider all the way both ways and click Done. The slider leaves your volume alone while the dialog is open.
• A slider's Hardware section shows what it has learned, like "Calibrated: 170–2550".

🔌 Wiring helpers

• Detect pins. A pin field opens a dialog with every GPIO. Move a slider or press a button and its pin lights up; you still pick it yourself.
• + Add listens for the new control. Add a slider or button, then move or press it: its pin shows up and is selected. or Choose manually shows the full grid instead.
• Find screens. Each bus in the I2C buses dialog can scan its pins and say which screens answered, and which buttons they belong to.
• Try the lights. A button's Hardware section lights its LED or LED pair, even on pins you haven't saved yet.

🎚️ Simpler slider and button feel

• Smoothing is controller-wide, under Controller settings › Sliders (Low, Normal, High or Custom). Volco no longer smooths a second time on top of the controller, so sliders follow you without lag.
• Reverse direction is in each slider's Hardware section and is stored on the controller.
• Hold after and Double press within are controller-wide, under Controller settings › Buttons. Saving only these doesn't restart the controller.
• Curve and dead zone are gone. Sliders map linearly.

🚧 Known issues

• Cancelling Re-calibrate and reopening it right away on the same slider can close the new dialog early. Wait a moment before reopening.
• The Connection dialog has no automatic port choice yet, and doesn't refresh its USB list on its own (#119).
• An app whose exe is renamed by an update (for example app-1.2.exe → app-1.3.exe) isn't matched to its slider any more. Pick it again (#112).
• The screen preview is close to the controller's screen, but not pixel-identical (#113).
• Programs and scripts don't run over Wi-Fi or WebSocket until the controller can be authenticated (#89). Media actions work on every connection.
• Only the ESP32 (not the S2, S3 or C3) is supported, and the app is Windows only.
• Windows SmartScreen may warn the first time you run Volco.exe, because it isn't code-signed. Choose More info → Run anyway.

Found something odd? Please open an issue. The log at %APPDATA%\Volco\volco.log helps a lot.

Full changelog: v1.3...v1.4