I’ve just ordered a Roland GO:Mixer to use as an iPad/iPhone audio input device. The older one ($99) is bus powered, and there’s a newer one (“Pro”) that has batteries.

The general problem here is that norns and the ipad are both “comptuers” and not “usb audio devices” so you can’t just connect them together via usb - or even with the headphone/mic input if you have an ipad with a minijack (which requires a line-in TRS to mic TRRS cable adapter)

Search for an iOS SFTP app and then connect the ipad to norns over wifi (norns in hotspot mode I think works).

(I use Transmit on Mac and iOS, but the iOS version was discontinued and is not available at this time)

i was using blink shell for getting files from norns to ios (i think). it’s maybe overkill if that’s all you need to do, but it’s a really good one.

I’m pretty sure Terminus on iOS can handle getting files via scp as well.

Thanks a lot everyone for the insight! I think the iRig duo looks great, has a lightning cable included and also offers MIDI capability, which the Roland does not. The street price of both is pretty close and not too high. Plus I can save on the cam connection kit.

I still have to understand the file system of modern iOS better to understand the wifi file transfer. It is like the cyberduck thing I use for connecting Norns to my computer for installing new instrument updates, right?

My last iPad used a complicated per app folder system that was only accessible via the iTunes.

It’s great to see that this might really work. :slight_smile:

In Transmit at least, you have to FTP a file to it’s local app directory (which is similar to that older per-app folder system I guess), but then you can easily use Save to Files to save it to the Files app or open it in another app with a “send to…” button.

Look up details about the built in Files app as thats an easy way to save things

(EDIT - looks like you can add specific apps to Files to make saving easier)

Also - yes, what we are describing is exactly like using Cyberduck as you have been.

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i have one and i like it quite a bit. onboard midi (via 1/8" minijack adapter) is a welcome bonus. it can eat through batteries pretty fast if you’re using the preamps or phantom power – i recommend packing some extra rechargeables.

I am having trouble with midi out from norns 190422.

Using a m-audio midisport uno adapter -> babyface pro -> computer.

Midi in works great (can control earthsea via midi). Midi out on any app I tried doesn’t work (earthsea, loom, awake). I have confirmed midi out works fine if I plug the usb port of the midi sport into my computer and route computer keyboard midi to it from ableton.

In the devices > midi screen, I see “USB Uno MIDI Interface” net to 1

Any idea?

Thank you fro sharing your experience - sounds very encouraging and I think I will try one of those.

I don’t think that I would need a lot of phantom power when I am not in reach of a mains out, so that should not be much of an issue. I might use contact microphones in nature though, hoping that the direct monitoring will allow to preamp them into Norns.

It’s not easy to figure out a fitting balance between what you want/need and what is actual possible with reasonable effort (also: what is ‘reasonable’?)

Swam out too far. Need help!

I had the same issues as @Justmat and attempted to fix with @zebra’s solution of Norns: help (./waf clean && ./waf build AND nuking system.pset/state ), which worked for resuming scripts, but then I got ahead of myself and pulled norns directly from git and am now having script engine errors seemingly related to softcut.filter_dry()

Not all scripts are affected, but I get a very similar error when loading Bounds, Awake, Orca…

From Matron:

### SCRIPT ERROR: init

/home/we/dust/code/orca/lib/engines.lua:100: attempt to call a nil value (field 'filter_dry')
stack traceback:
	/home/we/norns/lua/core/norns.lua:185: in field 'filter_dry'
	/home/we/dust/code/orca/lib/engines.lua:100: in field 'init'
	/home/we/dust/code/orca/orca.lua:355: in function 'init'
	/home/we/norns/lua/core/script.lua:74: in function 'core/script.init'
	[C]: in function 'xpcall'
	/home/we/norns/lua/core/norns.lua:186: in field 'try'
	/home/we/norns/lua/core/engine.lua:89: in function </home/we/norns/lua/core/engine.lua:88>

>> reading PMAP /home/we/dust/data/orca/orca.pmap

I mean, I guess I could try getting it back to the latest stable, but where’s the fun/lesson in that?

we merged a breaking change into master, and need to add a hotfix for easy backwards compatibility. I can get to it tomorrow, sorry for the trouble

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No worries whatsoever @tehn, I suspected something like that and that’s the risk one takes when pulling from master instead of just waiting, but my day job has me too trained.

Thanks for the quick response as usual, I’m off to check out all the great Max ports @andrew’s been tossing up here until the dust settles… so to speak.

@atomboyd you have some options

  1. you can reset to some earlier place in the git history, maybe this hash:
    9f9aff28d047b8754ba47cdaeb19a938ff6e5e7c

  2. you can replace calls to filter_ to pre_filter_ in lua. e.g. pretty sure this would do it: back up first

cd ~
cp -R dust/ dust-backup/
cd dust
find . -type f -name "*.lua" | xargs sed -i 's/filter_/pre_filter_/g'

danger is other stuff that uses the string filter_. maybe lots. for a “dry run” remove -i and pipe sed to less

  1. add wrappers in the softcut module. or wait for me or brian to do it. (its a little ugly, but i guess it’s better than breakage, so, ehh, i’ll just do that right now.)

update: @atomboyd i pushed a branch with the backwards-compatibility wrapper and opened a PR. not totally convinced this is an awesome idea in the long run, versus just updating scripts (after we release a new version.)

if you want to try it, you can pull it from my fork

cd ~/norns
git remote add catfact https://github.com/catfact/norns.git
git fetch --all
git checkout catfact/softcut-pre-filter-wrap
./waf clean && ./waf

the last command not because it is necessary for this particular change, but always a good idea to rebuild when you pull down changes in norns repo.


meta question: seems like our git workflow could use a dev branch, strictly for API-breaking changes. i know this is controversial. any thoughts? our branch / tag protocol is extremely minimal right now.

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@zebra SUCCESS. I’m floored by how quick that was. Much appreciated.

Re: git workflow, I love the idea of a dev branch personally. Testing steps on PRS and dev branch would personally be a great learning tool for someone like me who likes a small goal oriented task (like onboarding junior devs), but admittedly extra work for people who are already contributing so much. I’d hate to see people get frustrated with process lock or review bandwidth.

Just my two cents as I feel like a mooch consuming all these great scripts and not feeling like I can find the time in the day to contribute, even nominally. Maybe having a kid will help?

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this was all not understanding on my part.

earthsea - only midi in currently
awake - midi out in addition to audio needs to be turned on in the params screen for the app
loom - same thing as awake

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I thought midi out worked in earthsea. I recall @Justmat posting something showing that.

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interesting, the only reason I say it doesn’t support midi out is because I was reading through the code https://github.com/tehn/ash/blob/master/earthsea.lua trying to figure out if there was a specific thing I needed to do, and there doesn’t seem to be any code relating to triggering midi notes (there is some for triggering the engine notes if midi in is received but that’s all the midi related stuff I see).

I was working on midi out for earthsea. :sweat_smile: Unfortunately, I couldn’t conquer the hung notes, so I never shared it. Perhaps I should pick it back up.

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Having seen this video, I would concur with your statement of picking this back up. It’s a wonderfully simple and pleasant method of midi out and representation on the Norns.

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Well I got a norns yesterday and I’ve been fiddling with getting it all set up this morning. It’s plenty deep but I think I’m slowly getting a feel for how the menu navigation system works. I haven’t tried doing any actual creative stuff with it yet. So far the only problems I’ve ran into are:

I seem to be having difficulty connecting to Internet. I’ve only been able to use the norns hotspot.

I updated from the older version that was installed to I believe the second newest one, as recommended, but since then I haven’t seemed to be able to update to the latest version. I select update but nothing happens. Rather confusing.

When I tried installing FM7, it would run an error code on me and no scripts would load. I had to remove it. How can I fix the file so that I can successfully use it?

Those are my only questions for now. I’m going to have lunch and then try connecting some audio sources and my keyboard to it and see what I can get up to.

Is it possible to have norns listen to all incoming midi? like Omni Channel or something? Id like to map more than one midi device to control parameters.

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