Bluetooth MIDI Controller

Getting Stuff Done How do I .... ?
#1

I have built a simple MIDI controller which connects via BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy). It works fine in the dev application, i.e. it connects to my Ubuntu machine and sends the proper control codes when one of the buttons is pressed. My question is: How do I get Ardour (or Mixbus) to recognize the device? Opening the Edit->Preferences->Midi Port Config doesn’t show the device which is understandable since the device is not connected to an actual port. Is there a way to make Ardour see this device? Or is this a matter of making the Ubuntu machine recognize the connection as a port? I’ve searched and searched and come up blank.

#2

I’m a little confused: are the “control codes” MIDI messages? If not, then you likey need to run some kind of host application which converts a (presumably proprietary) “control code” to a MIDI message: that host application should expose MIDI port(s) to the underlying audio driver.

/me looks back

Hmm, you wrote “I have built a simple MIDI controller” – is this a completely DIY design, or are you using a kit of some sort?

#3

MIDI CC. Nothing strange about them. I used an ESP32 Dev kit for the hardware.

#4

The only MIDI devices that Ardour will see are the ones known to ALSA. If it is known to ALSA, it will be available in Ardour. If not, it will not.

#5

Thanks Paul. I have the MIDI part down. I built a USB MIDI controller that works fine in Ardour. It’s the BLE version of the controller I need to get recognized. So I will look at ALSA and BLE.

#6

You could try compiling Bluez with MIDI support (BlueZ with MIDI over BLE Support).

#7

And YES! That did the trick. Thank you Daryl. My wireless MIDI controller works!

1 Like
#8

This topic was automatically closed 91 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.