Sonic-pi: Support for external controllers (e.g. Monome, Launchpad, etc.)?

[tomekr]

Hi all, has anyone looked into implementing support for an external controller such as a Monome (http://monome.org/grid/) or launchpad (https://global.novationmusic.com/launch/launchpad)? I'm not quite sure the best way to approach this functionality so I was hoping to maybe get some ideas from the team in case there have already been discussions related to this feature.

[llloret]

Hi,

yes, MIDI support is in the works.

[tomekr]

Great, any idea on how that is going to work at the moment from a high level? Not sure if it'll require plugins in a specific format to be written for devices but either way if you need any help with that or testing I've got a Launchpad and quite a bit of Ruby experience.

I also just stumbled upon this thread from the Google Group (https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/sonic-pi/controller|sort:relevance/sonic-pi/Cy1Ti9fw6os/QUmXSohlEAAJ) which seems to have some independent implementations

[samaaron]

We're going to make it as platform agnostic as possible doing conversion from high level MIDI messages such as: midi :note_on, 70 (a rough example of the kind of syntax it might end up as) using a well-timed Erlang scheduler to forward the messages on to a little C++ binary which will then turn the message to MIDI and ship it to the device.

We'll let you know just as soon as you can play with a working beta. We would love your feedback and assistance with this feature's development.

[samaaron]

Since version v3.0 we've had full support for both MIDI and OSC which will enable you to work with any generic controller such as monomes and launchpads :-)

I'm also working on a GUI grid interface which will support a similar (if not identical) API to monome so people without external hardware can start playing along too :-)