uiknob 'Value' is a numeric (https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/matlab.ui.control.knob-properties.html), so both strcmp calls return false, so app.Edge is not set.
value = 3; % some numeric value
strcmp(value,'rising')
strcmp(value,'falling')
Regardless of that, you should initialize app.Edge, app.AC, and app.DC in your startupFcn to be the values corresponding to their repective knobs, in case the user clicks the start button without interacting with the knobs.