Today 29.06 ModularGrid will move to a new server. I set the site to "read only mode" so people can read data but not write into the database to prevent any data corruption during migration.
IP address will change so it might take up to a day depending on DNS cache to see the new site.
I try my best to not screw it up. Wish us all luck.

Feature Request: Filter by depth. Certain cases are rather shallow (like skiffs) and it would be nice I could filter out any modules that just can't fit.
-- WesleyM77

As a workaround: you can order by depth.

Hi Modulargrid,

62k active members or 62k sold items on Market place?
-- GarfieldModular

62k members that managed to click on the activation link in the registration mail

62,000 users? That's hardly believable !
-- fredeke

You can see them all here and write them a PM :)
https://www.modulargrid.net/e/users

Searchable User Messages

You can now search in your private user messages. This feature will be probably used by myself the most.

On ModularGrid we are currently 62.000.

I would recommend a transactional email service like Mandrill, but I understand this is additional expense!!
-- Kel_

Did not know Mandrill, thanks for the hint. Indeed that could become pricey soon.
I am also feeling not comfortable to hand out user email addresses to a third service provider.
Most emails are generated through the "notify me on a new marketplace offer" function. Maybe I limit or just shift this function to Unicorn land, that would cut the email traffic by half.

Hey,
sorry there is still an issue with the email server. It seems the hoster kind of throttles MG emails returning SMTP errors.
We cache outgoing emails so important stuff should not be lost but there can be a serious delay (days) in the transport.
I am on trying to improve the situation.

It has something to do with me not reading notification emails from the provider.

I am working on it. On most browser it should work already again. Sorry that that slipped through :(

A better Panel Selector

Every click on the tiny arrows in the Panel Selector now actually shows a new, different panel version.

In the former approach the system just rotated through every version change of a module data entry, no matter if only a text was changed or in fact a new image was uploaded.

Still seeing some flaky behavior with screenshot functions
-- Lugia

Thanks for reporting, it should work again for now with help from the wonder called "server reboot". I try to find out what the reason for all the trouble is ...

We now have 150Gb more space. Will see how long that goes. It does not sound much but daily backups must still be manageable.
Performance looks good here.

I am seeing slow loading of Racks for the past 24 hours. I am also seeing errors when I attempt to make a screenshot. Is anyone seeing the same issues?
-- studiobysbox

Thanks for reporting.

As for the speed, it's probably yet more Chinese and/or Indonesian spammers trying to get into MG.
-- Lugia

This time the reason is quite simple: the filesystem ran out of space from the million screenshots. Cache files and screenshots can not be generated anymore.
I am looking to free some space or buy more webspace from unicorn money. Maybe we will have a little downtime...

Any chance of being able to swap rows up or down?

We have this function for unicorn users! Find it under Edit -> Swap Rows

How about a hotkey for moving a module up or down a row?

You can hover over a module, press enter and move it with cursor keys.

-- DJMaytag

My feature request: Separate the non-pedals from the Pedals section and create a dedicated section for standalone semi-modular or otherwise patchable hardware.
-- sibilant

I hear you, situation is not ideal. But I am not sure that another patchable hardware universe will improve the situation.
I think many of those Strymon BigSky pedals are placed on tables beside synth gear so there will be a lot of duplicates in the pedal and patchable hardware universe. But maybe it will come, followed by the 19" universe ;)

Reminder to myself: we need a private note section...

Show Raters

The User Ratings are no more anonymous. Users wanted to have more transparency who is rating them up or down.
That also might help to easier find out vote abuse.
See the usernames of raters in the User Rating box on the User detail pages.

However, I just ordered an intellijel 7U, and I mocked up some images for a SynthAccess guitar module that should fit in the 1U space, but my image is getting cropped incorrectly. I designed for 44HP an 1U. If I edit the custom module to say that it's 48HP, the the height grows, so I must have the proportions right. However, I never see the pixels at the edges. It's like there's a huge inset, even though the proportions are correct.

There are two "standards" for 1U module dimensions. ModularGrid uses the one from Pulplogic.

Can anyone suggest a method for creating a proper 1U image?

You have to add a small vertical padding for 1U modules that follow Intellijels standard.
Crop the module perfectly, read the height and multiply it with 1.082. That is the new height of the canvas. Center the module vertically in the canvas and save as .png, transparency preserved.

See this rack:

-- rsdio

I’ve been testing for a couple of days and can no longer reproduce, so it seems resolved. THANK YOU!!!

That's good to hear!

Maybe I should have noticed that every time I was getting to the “d” in “Clouds” something happened, but I never used the keyboard shortcuts anyway.

Nobody uses the shortcuts, except me. That's a shame, because the , and . are quite nice.

Thanks for reporting, I want to fix the issues but have a difficult time to replicate them.
However I have an idea what's going wrong.
I assume you're experiencing the problems on the My Modular page?

The desktop version listens to keyboard shortcuts. Shortcuts like backspace delete modules, d duplicates them and so on.
If the browser enters shortcut mode, the input fields are disabled, maybe this happens on your iOS device.

I have now disabled the whole shortcut routine for touchdevices, it makes no sense there anyway.
I have already deployed what's hopefully is a fix. Check back if it improves the behaviour or not.

Hey,
to add modules to "My Modules" click on the suitcase icon of the module in the module finder.
To remove modules click again on the suitcase icon.

To add all modules of a rack to "My Modules" go to the rack view page.
Top left subnavigation you find an entry Edit->Add all to My Modules.

We now have a simple user rating system! See first post.

User Rating

We have a simple user rating system to help with trustworthiness of user transactions on the marketplace.
On every users profile page you can vote up or down your experience with a user.
You just vote the user in general, not single transactions. It does not matter if you are the seller or buyer.
The accumulated votes will be displayed on offers and in the user profile.

Send Limits in the Messenger

A spammer tried to send thousands of automated messages to users and partly succeeded (sorry!).
We now have a rate limit to prevent that in the future. Standard users can only send three messages per hour. Unicorns can send unlimited messages.

Sorry for the issues. Sadly the messenger had no spam protection so Werytuifdsa was able to send her offer to ca 2000 users and killed the SMTP doing that
We now have a limit for standard users: they cannot send more than 3 messages per hour.
Limits, fences, borders everywhere, it's not what I had on my mind ...

That is a test message that should proove, that the eternal spinning bug on quotes is fixed. E.G. comments are working again on rack view.

Reminder to myself: add a note section to the racks

I liked how 1U was hidden unless you turned on that radio button

1U manufacturers hated that function.

but now whenever I hit Reset I get to see all the 1U modules in there. Would it be possible that the Reset also retains/remembers the last Height selected?

It breaks the expected behaviour of what a reset does but in this case it seems like a good idea, so now it works like you suggested.

Or am I just being weird?

That is a complete unrelated question!

EDITED Nov 15th 2019, 12:28

Currently it's not possible to add the power consumption of Series 500 modules like we do it with Eurorack systems.
That should be improved. The goal is, that it should be possible to calculate the power requirements of all modules that are added to an enclosing/rack so it would be easy to verify that a power supply is sufficient.
We missed to collect power data for Series 500 modules so that must be added at first.
I am not so deep into electronics so I need some help:

I have read in the 500 Module Series Spec that a bus connector delivers +16, -16 and +48V.

That matches with the API lunchbox that has three LEDs, labeled with +16, -16 and +48V.

I guess these basic assumptions are correct:

• Every 500 Series compatible enclosing has a power supply that delivers +16V, -16V and +48V.
• To calculate the power consumption of the system, all three values of all modules must be summed separately.

But I am not quite sure how that matches with the spec of e.g. the API 512c module.

512C has a switch for 48v phantom power but the spec only says:
Power Consumption: ±12/18 Volts/DC, @40 ma.

That mismatches with the 16V spec.
1. How should user enter this data into the database?
2. Can those values be converted to 16V?
3. Do we need additional fields in the database?

Is the data sheet summary available for pedal board and 500 series effects?

no, it's not available.
For reasons I cannot remember we did not collect the power data for 500 series modules.
We have power data for pedals, but the data sheet has to work different because of the different possible voltages and the fact that the pedalboards don't have the concept of rows.
Both issues can be addressed, though.

Thank you again for all the work, I plan to support site for a long time.
-- paramnesia

Thanks for supporting!

rotate and delete modules on Android devices

You could not click the delete and rotate button on Android. This is fixed.

I understand your anger but we don't allow doxxing, e.G. disclose of names.

Half Height formats

Buchla half-height

Similar to the Eurorack 1U tiles we now have support for half-height modules in the Buchla universe (h series).

Moog Unit CP formats

Moog Unit universe got support for CP modules like the Moogerfoogers.

Height Selectbox

The old Show 1U checkbox in the module search form is replaced with a Height select box.
That improves functionality in a way that it is now possible to show

• modules of any height
• only half-height modules
• only full-size modules.

Show modules of any height is the default.

Minimal theme as default

Minimal theme replaces the old bookshelf theme as default.

Do you have an example where it does not work?

In general:
* if you upload a JPG, where the pedal is placed on an evenly background, the software tries to autocrop the pedal and change the even background into transparency.
* if you upload a PNG there is no auto image processing involved.

So if the autocrop does not work uploaded PNGs that were edited with an external software indeed give the best results.

Also check where you get the dimensions from.
Instead of giving the right dimensions of a pedal, shops like Amazon often just list the dimension of the package.

no more anonymous rack views

The URL https://www.modulargrid.net/x/racks/view/ pointed to the last rack you had edited.
Users posted that link in the forum to show their rack which was confusing because it always shows the active rack of the current logged in user.

Now https://www.modulargrid.net/x/racks/view/ always redirects to the rack view with valid id, e.g.
www.modulargrid.net/x/racks/view/96349

Refactored Patch index

The patch index page now looks and behaves like the rack index page.
It's fullwidth, has high-res thumbnails and a search by name function. Also loads faster.

how to find a patch by keyword? is there any search engine?
-- DirkB

Yesterday there was none, now there is one :)

Users cannot add manufacturers.
https://www.modulargrid.net/e/forum/posts/index/801

Is Centrevillage your brand?

Edit: I have added Centrevillage

EDITED Sep 23rd 2019, 14:01

If one logs-in at modulargrid.net, from there how to get to that page without using that link?
-- GarfieldModular

The Modular News section is linked on the homepage, under the News from the Labs section, above Top Modules.
Button is called Discover Social Media Modular News

Should that be more prominent?

Firefox should work. I have tested it on MacOS and Win10. I haven't heard of others with this problem yet, but maybe they just did not report.

Check also the Modular News section here:

https://www.modulargrid.net/e/socialtope/

Currently you can only delete messages one by one.

Does the problem occur with ANY of your racks? If it is a special rack can you send me the link.
Does it work in Chrome/Chromium browser?

Sounds like a cookie issue, but sadly I am not sure. Do you have an adblocker that might interfere with the site? Did you try the "keep me logged in" option?

YouTube videos - There can be only one!

If there are more than one YouTube videos on a module detail page or in the forum, only one can be played at a time, e.g the last one playing will pause. That is a requirement from YouTube, fixed.

Modular News refactored

The Modular News - brought to you by the social channels was broken because of changes in the Facebook API. Fixed.
While I was there: Modular News section had an isotope effect which aligned the news in columns via Javascript.
That was nice to look at but annoying to read, so I have swapped it with a simple view that works better on mobile phones.

If you are curious, find it somewhat hidden here:
https://www.modulargrid.net/e/socialtope

You can select in your rack which panel graphic to display via the Panel Selector function.
See here: https://www.modulargrid.net/e/forum/posts/index/1749

@modulargrid Would it be possible to add notes/comments under a patch without having to create a new thread in the forum? I'd like to keep some notes, or maybe a description, about a patch I'm making, but I don't necessarily want to make this public.
-- ParanormalPatroler

It's on the list to detach notes from the forum. That was not the brightest idea in the first place...

How can I upload modules so that they can be played with truegrid?
-- squire80513

Users cannot upload modules to TrueGrid. Development is halted because there are better options now.
Check out https://vcvrack.com/

We are discussing this a while. It's a good idea and absolutely makes sense but it's also quite some work. Might come at some point...

I got the weird problem that sometimes (like just a few minutes ago) almost all of my modules disappear from the grid and i have to add them again.
-- Quantum_Eraser

The adblock problem should be fixed so this might be an other problem.
In general if you are missing modules try to just reload the page...

Hi, love the software.
Feature requests:
- Download/ save option of Datasheet

I have optimized the print view. Workaround on Mac OS is to hit print and save as PDF.

• Datasheet option for all modules i own

Just put all modules in one rack is not an option?

• Option to select multiple modules to add to specific rack

That is a common request and may come at some time.

-- Haus_Sonsbeeck