Faces and States layout properties for a servo do not match the timing track opt

[chillipepper]

I have a servo defined and struggling to link it to a timing track.  I've built a snowman head which would pivot on a vertical post where the servo would control the head position.

On the layout tab, the States property is configurable.  The Faces property is not configurable.  On the Sequencer tab it is not possible to link the servo to a standard timing track.  However, it is possible to link to a lyric timing track?  This appears to conflict?  Or how can one configure this properly?

My ideal goal would be to define 5 servo positions, as example at position {20, 40, 60, 80, 100} then name each position {far-left, left, center, right, far right}  then within a sequence define a single servo track and using the defined position names to determine the servo position.  I'd like to avoid having to add many servo effects on the timeline, especially since each servo effect has to be clicked on to see its value.  With several moving snowman heads it would be easier to generally program

Is there a best practice way do this?

Thanks
--charlie

[Gilrock]

I'm not on a computer with xLights right now but I believe the way I coded it was you're supposed to drop a "Servo" effect and then that has a dropdown where you can select a lyric timing track and you select which servo it controls.  And I seem to remember what I did was internally I've got preset servo percentages that map to each phoneme.  It was mainly based on how far open I thought a mouth should be for each phoneme.  It was the best I could think of at the time.

[chillipepper]

Hi Gil,
Thanks for the reply.  The lyric track works well if the servo drives a mouth.  If the servo effect could support the standard state track, that would enable other servo applications nicely.  I've shared here a couple prototype examples (the paper snowman head will be replaced with am 18" sphere with singing face):

1) video prototyping the lyric track.  The challenge here is having to translate servo positions based on phenomes and would be error prone.  It also does not allow for value curves.
2) video prototyping effect presets.  A generic timing track was used to plan the head movements then effect presets were used.  The challenge here is that if one of the effects were to be improved at a later date then one would need to hunt down and update each effect instance.

It would be great if the servo effect could support generic timing track comments like the state effect.  Also shared in this post is a screenshot of a grayed out timing track field from within the value curve dialog box from the servo effect.  Might this be a possibility?  It is grayed out and I'm not sure if or how it might be used.

Thanks,
--Charlie