I’m planning to use a Korg MicroKey Air (Bluetooth) and possibly Mira or TouchOSC (via Wifi) in a live performance with Ableton Live.
What are the actual risks, and what are your experiences/advices with this ?
I’m really in the need of wireless controls.
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I’ve been using wireless remotes of all kinds for about 15 years in sound design work for theater.
Maybe you can give some more specifics about what you are doing one stage and what you need.
My experience with Bluetooth has been that it’s become pretty reliable through the years. Downside is if you do lose connection what occasionally will happen for whatever reason including human faults. You will need access to your laptop to reastablish the connection.
But I don’t know if that is a problem for you.
I’ve been using one button control of ques in Ableton live and Qlab. Most reliable solution is a diy one. A garage door relais remote soldered to an usb keyboard.
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I’m playing “sonified” swings, turnstile and some other pieces of outside parks furniture. We (3 of us) wish to play chords on a keyboard from any point of the game field, and trigger occasional actions (like “move to next part”) from iPhones/iPads.
I’ll have some hardwired trigger pedals here and there, but really wish I could play from the swings.
Edit : basically a concert version of our installation Play with me / Laura Muyldermans & Eric Arnal-Burtschy (artiste) / Wallonie-Bruxelles Architectures / Wallonie-Bruxelles Architectures
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I’m also using the CME WIDI in an installation, That one has been 100% reliable for me.
I’ve also used TouchOsc and other OSC based wireless based things. It’s works ok if you take your own wifi router to make your own network. But it still sometimes gave me trouble with things not connecting.
I’m think the Microkey could be very reliable.
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How is it different from making an ad hoc network ?
No risk that someone with bad intentions could break the connection ?
I make wireless controllers with ESP32 over wifi with OSC. I use gl.inet routers for my networks, they’re small, portable, and configurable. Ad-hoc networks have super limited range. You can password-protect your network and also make it “hidden” which will dramatically reduce the potential for any malicious or accidental interference. The nicest thing about all of this, for me, is configuring the whole setup as static IP so I don’t have to reassign all the addresses every time. The connections become “set and forget.”
It’s nice to hear bluetooth has become more reliable, it used to be a total nightmare.
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I’ve also worked with ad hoc network but i prefer to have a separate router for it. Also because the times i used it there were often quite a long distance over which it should function so i could put the router in the middle. Trouble with wifi were often that the computer used for the performance was also someone’s or my own work computer and different wifi settings of the computer would pop up. Also you need static IP adreses. With the a mac you can set a different location in the network settings to switch to the performance static IP mode.
I’ve never had that happen. I think it’s also not so easy to break into an established bluetooth connection. I often use bluetooth speakers in installations and performances.
The trouble with audio over bluetooth is that it works fine when no one is around but as soon as the audience comes in with their phones sending lots of bluetooth around the reliability goes down.
But I don’t think that’s a problem with midi since there is so little data to be send compared to audio.
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Thanks all for your input.
I’ve spend an entire day of rehearsal yesterday, only using BT (Roli Block & MicroAIR) without any problem. Hopefully that will also be the case with an audience.
All I can say is have fun!
And more fun:
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