Developing a Control Surface library

Community Ideas for Ardour
#1

Say I want to write a shared lib for a control surface, Novation LaunchKey mini mk3.

So far, unsuccessful in getting it to work out-of-the-box. It does seem to react to Mackie Control, but not in a predictable way (sets then loses the DAW mode, but still reacts to music keys in random ways)

So, if I were to start writing the library (which I looked at some dot cc’s)
what’s the fastest way to write a small function which sets basic stuff, so I can replicate this to other functions of the device?

Cheers
Rast

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#2

Presumably the Novation Launchkey mk4 support would be a good place to start.

Sadly, those devices (the mk4) do not work with a 6.x linux kernel, which has basically made the work I did on them last year much less valuable (to me … I run 6.x and cannot use them any more).

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#3

Hey @paul , I was considering a Novation launch thingie for Linux use. Hearing about this incompatibility is a bummer. Do you have any links documenting the issue? Or is it just something on your system? I always assumed them to be class compliant midi devices, using sysex for anything fancy.

#4

The problem is in the USB firmware (which I am guessing Novation may not have developed in-house). It all works fine on 5.x kernels, but the devices do not exist from the POV of a 6.x kernel. Confirmed by several other users.

Novation have been quite friendly towards Ardour, and I worked closely with them on the LK mk4 support. However, despite notifying them of this problem many, many months ago and regularly asking followup questions, I have heard nothing.

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#5

I’m not sure why you’re including the kernel in this convo.

Reaper works fine with mk3 mini both ways (control and feedback), although it’s using Mackie Universal (or similar)

I thought this was just about programming the correct model in sys-ex, and MIDI messages for DAW mode. (also talking about Mackie Universal “fallback”) - although I would like to use Novation libraries that exist, and just modify them - perhaps that’s why you mention the kernel

Last but not least, Ardour actually activates the device (DAW mode LEDs), but only for a short time, and then gets out of the DAW mode.

Maybe I complicated the question…

#6

  1. the kernel plays a role in whether or not a USB device is usable on any Linux machine. The mk3 devices all work fine on all Linux kernels, but the mk4 devices fail on (at least) early 6.x version kernels (this may have been fixed subsequently; not yet clear).

  2. I know of no “Novation libraries”, if by that you mean librasries provided by Novation. If you mean Ardour’s existing Novation support, that’s in libs/surfaces/launchkey_4

  3. Ardour’s support is intended to be be in DAW mode. I can’t investigate that easily at present, because of (a) other development work (b) my system runs a kernel on which the mk4 devices do not exist.

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#7

Strange, since Novation seems to have a fairly large in-house firmware development team, as can be gathered from a conference talk I’ve seen a video of, but can’t find at the moment. It was some years ago, though.

#8

Oh, yes, I meant the libraries provided by Ardour, so as to differentiate between Mackie emulation and “pure” Novation control surface.

But, confusingly, I am strictly talking about mk3, and it neither exists in the menus, nor does it work as Mackie emulated.

#9

Correct. You would need to make a copy of the mk4 version and modify appropriately. In particular, the USB vendor IDs would need to be changed before anything, so that the device is recognized, then later any changes to reflect the actual changes to how the device & DAW interact.

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