Facility Control

I was just wondering if any of you have any experience with Dashboard to MIDI sollutions. Including MSC commands.

I'm trying to get a DashBoard to control MA DOT2 PC Lightning. And I kinda have it done. I sent through QLAB and basically just call on cues in QLAB that in turn sends the MIDI.

However I'm just wondering if anyone have a better sollution to this? As far as I know I cannot send MIDI from DashBoard (future maybe?), and I dont know of any other third-party sollutions of boxes that could act as a translator. Anyone?

Send OSC through Dashboard and then OSCulator on the remote end to convert to MIDI?
#DashBoard

OSC would be one option.

DashBoard can be controlled by MIDI panels but does not have built-in control for any audio consoles.

Another option that might work would be to use a MIDI to IP Converter - there are several pieces of software that do this. Once you're getting the MIDI data over IP, you'd be able to control it through DashBoard.

James
#DashBoard

So... I'm revisitting this one again @jamespeltzer
This is like the ONE thing missing from DashBoard really...

So far I've been using QLAB in order to trigger specific MIDI notes and MSC commands to my DOT2 lighting console. And it works, fairly well...
However, it's quite a bit of work in order to get this going correctly. There's cue IDs to run on QLAB, then there's the MSC commands to run on DOT2, or notes on/off with different commands from DashBoard, so on so forth...

I've been looking at this:
https://github.com/fred-dev/OSC_MIDI_OSC
As a program to help me. However the developer here stopped before he got to MSC (sadly).

Then there's allways this thing in order to get a RTP MIDI sollution for Windows:
https://www.tobias-erichsen.de/software/rtpmidi.html
Works great btw!

I could use OSCulator... However that is MAC only, and sadly, MA lighting only runs on PC when it comes to DOT2 lighting.
I'm trying to minimize the amount of hardware here and not force myself to have both PC and MAC. Yes I am aware QLAB is MAC only, and that's the exact reason why I'm trying to find another solution to send MIDI from DashBoard.

But there's still that one thing... That one little bit to actually have a MIDI output from DashBoard instead of having to use a third party software just to do this.
There's alot of hardware out there (lighting consoles, audio mixers, etc) that does not support OSC or UDP/TCP strings. And that's the final small part DashBoard needs in order to really step it up to control even more "stuff" in my opinion.

I'm not gonna mention the product, but I'm pretty sure ROSS is aware of their competing product (even though DashBoard is freeware so far), that has MIDI support if you choose to buy it. Thing is, I really like DashBoard and the customisation. However the lack of MIDI output make me look for other systems as well...

But yeah, this is the tiny bit I'm still missing. I'm not asking ROSS to supply the actual MIDI card to use as an output, but the option to send MIDI out on an allready existing physical, or virtual MIDI output installed on a machine would be so great...
#DashBoard

Hi @astalsberg
"‹I can pass along this request but cannot provide you any guarantees or timelines at present. Have you attempted to use any of the MIDI-to-IP converters out there?

James
#DashBoard

Hi @astalsberg
"‹I can pass along this request but cannot provide you any guarantees or timelines at present. Have you attempted to use any of the MIDI-to-IP converters out there?

James

I'm not sure what you mean with MIDI-to-IP? And I dont need MIDI in to DashBoard, but what I need is MIDI out from DashBoard so that I can control the hardware that does not support OSC og any other Ethernet protocol. VI2000 mixer, or MA Lighting DOT2 to mention a few.
#DashBoard

Yes, ok @jamespeltzer, I'm currently using rtpMIDI from Tobias Erichson (https://www.tobias-erichsen.de/software/rtpmidi.html), in order to get a PC to work together with apple rtpMIDI and Bonjour.

And it works, both as MIDI IN and MIDI OUT for software that can use this.
But how would I go about creating a MIDI message going OUT from DashBoard? That is where I am stuck.


#DashBoard

In its current state, DashBoard can't send arbitrary MIDI messages. RTP-MIDI is a bit of a different matter:
RTP MIDI has several ways of operating. One way is to install an RTP-MIDI driver so that the remote MIDI device appears on your computer as a standard MIDI device.
The other way is to directly-write the RTP MIDI messages to the RTP MIDI receiver over TCP/IP.

In this scenario, you would add the RTP MIDI header to the MIDI bytes you would like to send and, theoretically, you could send those bytes from DashBoard via a or rosstalk.sendMessage.

The RTP header and the ability to talk directly to the RTP MIDI device without the driver is mentioned in the wiki link I sent you in my previous response.

James
#DashBoard

@astalsberg, sometimes I write "helper apps" to bridge between programs and accomplish what I want to do. Not sure if this helps, but there's a Node.js library for MSC control on a dot2. If you took this library and added in support for say, TCP input, you could then use rosstalk.sendMessage to send a message to the helper app which then relays it in the appropriate format for the lighting console.

Here's a link to the library: https://www.npmjs.com/package/mamsc
#DashBoard

Thank you James and Joseph.

I guess I'll have some more reading up to do!
#DashBoard

Very interesting topic! Has this been going any further? Could a custom MIDI controller be used to mimic a hardware control surface then?
#DashBoard