#34

There’s no GUI in my repo. I’m not sure how other hardware works but my code should work with any APC40 and Puredata.

The MIDI x,y mapping is abstracted enough that I can imagine a configuration system where a vector of MIDI messages is defined and the translator “just works” but that for the future.

I’ve been considering the suggestion from @zebra to make a hardware adaptor. My shop space has enough hardware the make this happen.

#35

Lol…there was a flag on the OSC library to work in blocking mode. Now all order is maintained for messages.

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#36

@zebra you mentioned building a programmable MIDI to Monome serial hardware adapter would be a generically useful thing to have. I agree and I’ve been thinking about this since you mentioned. It seems there was an art school project in 2008 to do something kind of like this. Most references are broken.

My protocol adapter is working fine. The clock seems to be very fast and the LED response is as realtime as I can perceive. I’m thinking of making a mode switch to take the 8x8 into 4 quadrant modes to get a 256 grid.

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#37

yeah, seemed like for a while there were quite a few DIY arduinomes out there.

the arduinome source code is still up:
[ https://sourceforge.net/projects/arduinome/files/Arduinome/ ]
[ed: woops, fixed the link]

tbh, it’s… well it’s not the prettiest thing i’ve ever seen. derived from original 40h firmware i think.

(you know all the official monome device sources are online right? https://github.com/monome/mk )

the official firmware itself is done in a very clean but very direct, low-level style squarely targeting 8-bit AVRs.

i have long thought that a nice modular, platform-agnostic implementation of the device side serial protocol would be a cool thing to do. but have never got around to it :weary:

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#38

Oh my, that’s awesome. I was not aware. This is a niche community and it’s been a fast ramp to get caught up. It’s pretty much living the dream.

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#39

I’m revisiting the idea of a hardware adapter to convert MIDI to Monome Serial. It looks like nearly everything can be done with a Teensy++ and a USB host shield. Here’s my notes. Is this crazy?

MIDI to Monome Serial adapter

Parts

Firmware requirements

#40

Seems like it works for a foundation. I think there will be some art in the translation to and from the serialosc protocol, eh?

#41

The targets that need interpretation are the led brightness and arc led count. For the APC, there’s a 5x8 grid that has three colors and a single Delta encoder. There are also led rings with 15 steps. Excluding those it’s just a 8x10 grid.

I realize I could just buy or build a normal unit but I find this microcontroller stuff fun.

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#42

i guess you could even do hardware midi and lose the shield (at least with teensy 3 and up)

if you’re not doing hardware midi i’m actually not seeing why you would need 3.3v but maybe i’m missing something

#43

I don’t know the difference between a USB host driver for a MIDI hardware device and hardware MIDI. What do you mean?

I think the 3.3V on the Teensy is because the other guy made the shield for that voltage. It’s “arduino compatible”.

#44

uh, i’m being stupid, thought the akai thing had hardware midi but of course it’s usb only.

i mean old-school serial midi, aka 31250 baud uart with an optoisolator. teensy is a convenient way to talk to this (and its in the back of my mind because i have a number of interesting pre-usb controllers that aren’t doing anything r/n)

anyway, disregard

#45

haha, 5 pin DIN. Yeah. Noisebridge has lots of those, the Akai is not one of them. IIRC the Aleph docs recommend using a USB MIDI adapter to connect devices to it as a host :wink:

I was thinking about your avr32 implementation of USB MIDI but I found all the cool Teensy code yesterday afternoon.

#46

the Aleph docs recommend using a USB MIDI adapter to connect devices to it as a host :wink:

heh, that is quite true. however it would be equally happy to use an as-yet-nonexistent DIN-monomeserial adapter (happier, in fact.)

#47

Perhaps we can do both!

#48

@zebra it looks like you already implemented the Monome serial protocol for AVR microcontrollers

Imma try and load this onto the Teensy++ I have at the space. I think…after that it’s just about doing the MIDI table, translation functions and some glue to pass the translated bytes to the other host endpoint.

#49

that’s the host library though. for connecting monome device to arduino

#50

Ah, I see. I need the opposite. Well, the good news is I forgot I have an Arduino Due, which has USB host mode and is a 32bit AVR as you originally suggested! I got the USB MIDI driver and the MonomeHost Arduino sketch to compile and flash to the unit so I’m just waiting on a hardware adapter.

#51

This seems relevant to your interests:
http://www.fredrikolofsson.com/f0blog/?q=node/658

#52

Hi,

sorry for necro-posting but it’s the only place I’ve found when it comes to APC40 monome emulation.

I want to hook up APC40 to Norns so it can act just like a grid without routing it trough a Mac.

Can you please tell me did you managed to get APC40 working just like a monome Grid?

#53

This thread has info on midigrid lib

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