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Touch OSC midi control software

Posted: April 23rd, 2013, 9:05 pm
by dmxlighting
Touch OSC is a customizeable midi layout for iPad / iPhone and possibly Android (untested)

It will do whatever you want it to within the limitations of FS or any other midi controllable software.

The only bit you need to pay for is the iPad / iPhone app which is about £3.00 all the other software is FREE.

Many 'layout' or 'template' designers charge for their work. Im giving my design away to the FS community for free because its the right thing to do. You are welcome to make whatever changes you wish to make. It is what it is and as such will NOT be perfect for everyone. Its a basic template primarily to control submasters and some overrides.

If you want a special template and cant be bothered to do it yourself then I will consider making it for you BUT i will charge for this.

All the files you need can be downloaded from the developers site http://hexler.net/software/touchosc
There is also a forum with some info and video on how to build it yourself.

Here is my basic FS template along with the midi file for FS

Re: Touch OSC midi control software

Posted: April 26th, 2013, 6:13 pm
by dmxlighting
I'm a little bit surprised that few of you seem interested in this ?

Re: Touch OSC midi control software

Posted: April 26th, 2013, 9:46 pm
by djSupport
Remind me later this week and I'll post a link to it on the FB account... drive some traffic!

Re: Touch OSC midi control software

Posted: May 13th, 2013, 1:42 am
by buttza
I have only just learnt about this for controlling resolume. :) OSC is great. :)

Re: Touch OSC midi control software

Posted: January 3rd, 2014, 3:35 pm
by dekw1
I use my Ipad to control Freestyler, and an android pad to control Arkaos,
I can walk around most venues without loosing connection... The best discovery ever...

Re: Touch OSC midi control software

Posted: February 5th, 2014, 1:15 am
by neils
You may have just made my week. I have a show coming up this Friday, and have always dreamed of having a touch interface via my iPad, instead of double clicking submasters on my laptop. So let's get down to business, and thank you so much for the answers you are about to give me.

Done so far:
1) Installed TouchOSC on Win7(64) laptop
2) Installed MIDI bridge
3) Imported your sample file called FS basic.touchosc
4) Imported your matching MIDI file into FreeStyler

Questions:
1) Does the MIDI Bridge just run in the background, with no interaction or config needed ??
2) Can I assume I just hit Sync on the TouchOSC Editor, and both the layout and the MIDI assignment is transferred to the iPad ??
3) Say I have a chase on my submaster, which triggers a chase Cue. Sometimes the chase speed needs manipulating, and I need to adjust the % bar on the Cue window for the speed of that chase. Does your submaster slider achieve the same thing, or would I need to add a cue speed slider somewhere on your layout ?
4) Can I assume that the sliders on the right for movers are 0-255 DMX sliders, and when you slide you change the DMX value and hence the control of that slider.

Thanks again !!
Neil

Re: Touch OSC midi control software

Posted: February 5th, 2014, 3:34 am
by neils
OK, I seem to have gotten a little farther. I installed the app on my iPad, Layout=> Add, chose FS Basic, and had a mirror image of the layout that was on the editor. Now I am not sure if the MIDI commands got copied over with that layout. I thought I had to hit the SYNC button within the editor to upload the layout and MIDI commands, but SYNC just pops up a message to just use the iPad to select the layout from there, which seemed to work.

Since things are not working, my other concern is within Freestyler. Under the MIDI section, I see all of the MIDI note assignments, but was wondering about the input and output dropdowns at the top, right now mine says No Input and No Output. Now, I do not have my DMX dongle plugged in at this time, so not sure if that has something to do with it, but wanted to make sure there is nothing that has to be set within Freestyler for it to interface with TouchOSC over Wi-Fi. Will cable up the iPad to the laptop to see if things change or not.

Any other ideas or pointers are most welcomed at this point. I feel I am in the home stretch here, with MIDI setup in Freestyler and the layout loaded on the iPad, and the MIDI bridge up and running on the laptop.

Thanks guys
Neil

Re: Touch OSC midi control software

Posted: February 5th, 2014, 8:14 am
by dmxlighting
Neil

I'm at work right now and will reply with some proper answers later.
Looks like u are nearly there so can't be much that's stopping it working!

Lee

Re: Touch OSC midi control software

Posted: February 5th, 2014, 1:35 pm
by neils
Thanks Lee, appreciate any help you can lend to getting this setup to work. To add to my questions above, what is the difference between MIDI Bridge and rptMIDI ? I was rptMIDI was referred to on the TouchOSC site, and since I had no MIDI comm between the iPad and PC, decided to try that as well, and while I was able to pair the units, still got nothing.

The thing I don't like about MIDI is that you cannot see what is going on. On the DMX side, one can open a panel and troubleshoot issues until the right DMX values start to change, with MIDI I am just blindly pushing a button on the iPad and hoping for something to happen on the other end. Only thing I did notice was a green light blinking on the top right of TouchOSC.

Anyways, we'll chat later...

Thanks again !!

Re: Touch OSC midi control software

Posted: February 5th, 2014, 9:11 pm
by dmxlighting
Hi Neil

Ill write this in away that may help others having problems so forgive me if I state the obvious at any point!
Also Im reading ur comments and writing answers so it might not flow to well ??!!?
Anywy Ill attempt to answers as may of ur questions as I can...

No idea what rptMIDI is ? I have only used the MIDIbridge which works just fine.

You wrote :-

Questions:
1) Does the MIDI Bridge just run in the background, with no interaction or config needed ??
A> Yes it is what it is - no config here.

2) Can I assume I just hit Sync on the TouchOSC Editor, and both the layout and the MIDI assignment is transferred to the iPad ??
A> Yeah pretty much, that should do it

3) Say I have a chase on my submaster, which triggers a chase Cue. Sometimes the chase speed needs manipulating, and I need to adjust the % bar on the Cue window for the speed of that chase. Does your submaster slider achieve the same thing, or would I need to add a cue speed slider somewhere on your layout ?
A> The 5 faders and 5 rotary controls should operate sub master intensity and chase speed although I can't remember which way round it is.
EDIT - Just realised that the version u have only has the faders - can't remember if they operator the speed or the intensity.

4) Can I assume that the sliders on the right for movers are 0-255 DMX sliders, and when you slide you change the DMX value and hence the control of that slider.
A> No they are not direct DMX controls. They are manual overrides for movers etc. You must select the fixture(s) for this to work, also some or all of these controls will not work if the fixture profile is wrong.
Mostly this should work and is very handy during live gigs if you need an adhoc control over a head or scan.
The template I'm currently using is now on its own page as Ive added in much bigger pan / tilt window and some other control.


So you got ur laptop and iPad talking enough to get the basic FS layout from one to the other via sync. BTW the midi info would defiantly have been included here too!

The only thing I think you have missed out is telling the touch osc app to look for its host (i.e. ur laptop!)
Provided both devices are on the same WiFi and MIDI bridge is running on the laptop with the editor closed (not still synced!) this should be dead simple as the app will find ur laptop with no need to enter ash IP address.
If you can see the layout then touch the little 'i' on the top right of the page, this will open up the the config area of TouchOSC. Should look like this..

Connections

OSC: 192.168.10.13 (or something similar - you can click on this and change some ip and port settings)
MIDI Bridge: (this is the important one and should allow you to see ur laptop, touch on it and all being well it should config the ip settings) (I might have this a bit wrong but I'm doing this from memory!!!)
MIDI Mobilizer : Disabled
CoreMIDI : Disabled

BTW having no DMX device connected to ur laptop makes no difference to the midi control element!
The green light at the top right of the layout always flickers (something to do with MIDI comms) and I think there is one below it which might be in red when incoming MIDI is seem by the layout (again from memory can be 100%)

In Freestyler under MIDI, as you said, there is a drop down thingy for MIDI in and MIDI out. When all is correct this will say 'TouchOSC MIDI Bridge' in both. Once you get this you are truly in business!

Anyway my brain hurts now. Hope some of this helps - let me know!

Lee

Re: Touch OSC midi control software

Posted: February 6th, 2014, 12:41 am
by neils
Thanks Lee for taking the time to write up that informative answer. Two things I had to change on my side.

1) I had CoreMIDI enabled on the iPad, disabled it
2) I had TouchOSC editor still open on the PC, I closed it

Still nothing

I'm wondering now, why do you need to specify 2 IP entries on the iPad for both OSC and MIDIBridge ?? Technically should this not be the same IP ? In my case, I have 192.168.2.21 defined for both the OSC and MIDIBridge, which is the IP of my laptop where FS and MIDIBridge is running. So these two IPs are identical on the iPad.

Besides a flashing green light at the top of the app, is there any way of knowing what MIDI note is going out on the iPad?? And what about on the FS or MIDIBridge on the laptop, any way of seeing if any MIDI notes are coming into these programs ?? I find it tough to troubleshoot blindly like this. Will keep hacking away at config combinations and see what gives.

Thanks again
Neil

Re: Touch OSC midi control software

Posted: February 6th, 2014, 12:54 am
by neils
OK, just stumbled on 1 important point that we overlooked to discuss. Once all this stuff is up and running, one has to go into FS under MIDI, and select from the drop down menus the OSC bridge for input. Not sure if the bridge needs to be selected for output as well within FS. Then once the bridge is selected, you have to hit Start in the FS Midi menu.

Once I hit start, when I touch anything on the iPad, I see MIDI values changing on the bottom of the FS Midi window, so I know that something is working. But unfortunately nothing is affecting the lights. Trying some simple stuff like moving up and down the submaster list. Will keep poking around, I am sure there is something more within FS that I am missing, but just caught this one

Re: Touch OSC midi control software

Posted: February 6th, 2014, 1:11 am
by neils
OK, update. I just realized that leaving that FS MIdi window open gives me my troubleshooting tool, once you set the input and output in FS to the TouchOSC Bridge, and then hit START, things wake up on the FS side and MIDI comm starts between the two. If you do not go into the FS MIdi window, then NO OUTPUT is used by default on both input and output, and MIDI comm remains disabled until you hit START.

Now the good news is that I see the note and value moving. I looked up your Submaster MIDI values, and when I hit UP or DOWN on the app, those are the values that come in. Now why it does not move within FS is a complete baffle to me, and I am sure has something to do with that FS Midi window.

The other thing I am trying to understand in your layout. Bottom left has RGBW colors, but Red slider (15) is mapped to Cyan channel, Green slider (16) mapped to Magenta channel, Blue slider (17) mapped to Yellow channel, and White slider (18) mapped to White channel (this last one seems to make sense). If that an FS limitation with the way the color channels are named for RGB in MIDI ???

OK, gonna keep hacking away, some sort of combination in that FS MIDI window has got to allow the light to react to the incoming MIDI data.....

Re: Touch OSC midi control software

Posted: February 6th, 2014, 1:23 am
by neils
Stumped on another point. I just noticed that in your MIDI mapping file that I imported into FS, Notes are assigned to each function, but under Channel it says n.a. When I looked up the FS wiki for MIDI mapping, it says that it is under this Channel column that you define which DMX channel is triggered. Now I assume it is not that straight forward, since one could have multiple fixtures at different channel groupings, which means each function will fall under a different DMX value. So this is where I am stuck, and I am convinced that the hangup is here. The MIDI information is coming in, but FS does not know how to translate it to DMX, hence why nothing is affecting the lighting.

Your thoughts on the whole MIDI to DMX Channel mapping thing ?

Thanks

Re: Touch OSC midi control software

Posted: February 6th, 2014, 1:31 am
by neils
Perhaps I should give you an example of my layout, to make you understand what I am trying to do, and I am guessing this should be how most people have things setup.

I have 6 LED fixtures that are spaced out every 16 DMX channels. In reality I think it is only a 9 channel fixture, but my backup console was laid out in groups of 16 channels per light, so did it that way in case I had to fall back on that console in case of FS or laptop failure.

LED 1 DMX 1-9
LED 2 DMX 17-25
LED 3 DMX 33-41

Fixture Profile
Channel 1 = Master Dimmer
Channel 2 = Red
Channel 3 = Green
Channel 4 = Blue
Channel 5 = White
etc

So should I not plug in some of those channel numbers next to the matching functions and MIDI notes ??? How will the MIDI window know what DMX channel to trigger based on incoming MIDI note. I am guessing that FS takes care of this based on function. So when I had defined my fixtures and profiles, I told FS which channel is RGB, and then it is probably mapped to this MIDI menu. And if you plug a note in next to it, that should be enough to move those functions in FS.

Sorry dude, almost talking to myself in this thread here, trying to apply the logic between incoming MIDI note and the mapping of that function and DMX channel in FS.

Re: Touch OSC midi control software

Posted: February 8th, 2014, 2:53 pm
by dmxlighting
Neil

Sorry buddy I've been away on gigs and stuff.
Will find some time to get my setup together and look at it properly rather than trying to do this all from memory. However it's got to be something dead simple because u have covered most everything I can think of.
If you see the midi signals coming into fs on the midi setup then it should work in the program to control the subs etc.
at the end of the day midi is a fairly basic protocal (not too different to DMX except its a 2 way
Comms)

How did ur gig go?

Re: Touch OSC midi control software

Posted: February 9th, 2014, 4:20 pm
by neils
Hey thanks man, you're a real classy guy for sticking with this thread and helping me out here, appreciate that. Gig went well, but ended up just using the laptop straight away. To be honest, my brother ended up DJing most of the gig, leaving me to lights, so it's not like I needed the light show automated or anything. Just wanted to fool around with a more organized and portable solution.

In fact, that was going to be my next challenge, once I would get this stuff working at home, bring it out where there is no router, and figure out what to plugin for an ad-hoc connection between the laptop and the iPad. Once connected, I know they would see each other in a closed network, but was not sure if there would still be some default IP address on the laptop (without a router), which I would then plug into TouchOSC again. Assuming yes. With ad-hoc, it would allow the cool factor, be able to walk around the venue and change colors and gobos and move things around. Of course that would really be only for cool factor, since there is no submaster labels to know what the heck I am controlling, and controlling movers manually is not really ideal, would fire the mover patterns with a submaster cue.

In a perfect world, I wish that FS would be re-written, such that a smart client would allow smarter remote control via an app, so that one would have direct access to submaster cues, not just up, down, play. Direct access to cues also, I think only the buttons are direct, and even then, no labels (although buttons are easier to do if labeling was available). You get my point. You go buy a Home Theater receiver, and the entire thing is mirrored on an app, would love to see the same thing with FS, even if that meant bringing a router to setup a network on site.

But I guess for now, the best to use is TouchOSC, so will keep hacking away at it. In my case, with MIDI notes coming in, gotta figure out how those notes interact with your MIDI layout, and how my fixtures play into all this. But as mentioned before, irrelevant of fixture type, profile, channel, I should at the very least, be able to move my way around FS, like up and down on submasters.

Like you said, we probably have to compare setups page by page to see why mine differs from yours.

Thanks again bud !!

Re: Touch OSC midi control software

Posted: February 11th, 2014, 10:42 pm
by Kings
I just take a router with me. Not only is it it good for Touch OSC but you can also remotely control other computers/laptops via VNC and even set up an IP camera to monitor an area or equipment.

Re: Touch OSC midi control software

Posted: February 16th, 2014, 8:03 pm
by dmxlighting
Kings wrote:I just take a router with me. Not only is it it good for Touch OSC but you can also remotely control other computers/laptops via VNC and even set up an IP camera to monitor an area or equipment.

I take 2 wifi routers with me. (always good to have a backup)

However you can setup an adhoc arrangement which I have done before for exactly what you want to do.
Its not simple but not massively complex, can't say I recommend it really as the range is normally not that great and from memory it seemed to cause some latency problem that we could not work out.

Just get an old router off ebay or something.

Anyway Neil its been a while, just wondered if you have solved this yet?

Re: Touch OSC midi control software

Posted: February 16th, 2014, 9:14 pm
by Mattotone
[quote="neils"
In a perfect world, I wish that FS would be re-written, such that a smart client would allow smarter remote control via an app, so that one would have direct access to submaster cues, not just up, down, play. Direct access to cues also, I think only the buttons are direct, and even then, no labels (although buttons are easier to do if labeling was available). You get my point. You go buy a Home Theater receiver, and the entire thing is mirrored on an app, would love to see the same thing with FS, even if that meant bringing a router to setup a network on site.[/quote]

This functionality is actually already here, and is getting better support on each release.
The Android App and Windows Phone apps are the first to make use of this new functionality.

Matt

Re: Touch OSC midi control software

Posted: April 16th, 2014, 5:18 am
by buttza
In relation to this.

How do you get the label names to show up on the Windows app? Also does it do message value back?