Erae 2 documentation errors

Erae Touch
1

I’ve been searching around Erae 2 docs on Embodme’s official website, and found some peculiar things that might be interesting to Erae 2 users.
To me it seems like a 50/50 between features they want to implement in the future, and errors in documenting. I also got a vague LLM-ish feel when reading some parts, so it might be a hallucination of some sorts. Embodme once answered my E-mail with an AI assistant, so that might be the case(Though, they were open about using AI as an auto-reply tool by labeling it as such, and this occurred only once, and AFAIK the other times i was conversing with a human.)

  1. For expressive parameters, there are a lot of non-existing parameters specified, such as Smoothing, Intensity, Filter,

  2. MIDI 2.0 is specified as something already supported on Erae. In docs there’s multiple mentions of Erae capturing data in MIDI 2.0 standart internalyly, there’s even a field in the settings of the device that allows you to turn the MIDI 2.0 mode on. But so far, i couldn’t get Erae to output MIDI 2.0. This might be a mistake on my end, and maybe someone more experienced in MIDI 2.0 might get it to work, i would love to hear that.

  3. Docs specify having a MIDI monitor on the device itself, that displays a live scrolling log of ongoing MIDI data. There’s specification on what text means what parameter. But AFAIK, it’s not on the device.

  4. Keygrid and piano layouts are named differently in the documentation. They are named Iso keyboard and Chroma keyboard respectively.

  5. In the part where docs describe the physical buttons on top of Erae 2 it doesn’t say anything about “Loop” button(which is physically present), but specifies a “Calibration” button, which is not present on the Erae 2.

  6. Docs say this:
    "
    Holding certain switches while pressing others unlocks secondary functions. Available combinations depend on the active screen:

    • Plus + Minus (simultaneous, hold) — Reset the focused parameter to its factory default value.
    • Play/Rec + Stop (simultaneous) — Clear the current looper record buffer.
      While holding the Settings switch, contextual shift hints appear on the LCD so you can discover available combinations in context."
      This doesn’t happen.

  7. Erae Docs say that you can put “Image / Compressed Image — Custom bitmap rendered on the key surface”. You can’t

  8. Docs say that metronome works like this:
    The Metronome toggle enables an audible click output that follows the current tempo and clock source. The click is sent as a MIDI note on the configured routing.

    Right now, metronome uses a vibro-motor to give user a steady tact, and just a blinking play button in low power mode.

2

yeah, Ive found the same thing.

there are quite a few things that are either not yet implemented, or are incomplete, or perhaps are hangovers from previous versions.

being LLM generated or not, is irrelevant to me…
if anything, if it was generated, and pointed at the right code base / information source - it’d likely be more correct.

I think the issue is more down to ‘release’ management, and not having a firm grasp of what is released and what is not (yet), and the docs just are a reflection of that.

examples of recent issues in documentation, and how they were resolved:

a) the documentation included a finger data rate for API, not present in Erae Lab
I reported, and next release it was added in Erae Lab.
so it appears the feature was there, but it was just not visible (bug?) in Erae Lab

b) the documentation had a ‘new’ Looper settings dialog that was not present on device
a few days later, it just disappeared from docs.
a ‘feature’ not yet ready for release?

but it goes both ways, e.g. EraeLab/Firmware has features not in docs…
e.g.
API Zone
API zones have no built-in visual style — the color of each pixel is driven entirely by your software through the API, allowing fully custom visualizations.

not 100% accurate, in last FW release, you can now have animations on the API zone.
note: this is optional, so visual style is not enforced you can have custom, but its now an option.

in fairness, keeping documentation up to date when you are in active development is not easy, and frankly a thankless task much of the time - I think LLMs are actually improving the situation (has for my projects) , so all power to our AI overlords :laughing:

but yeah, the manual is a bit of a mixed bag…
but so is the software/firmware, its very feature rich, but some areas just don’t work (as intended)

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3

I agree. When correctly prompted, pointed at the right info, and fact-checked i have bothing against AI in doc generating. Though, i wish that Embodme was a little more eager to share their plans about Erae. Something like a roadmap would be a nice thing.

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