I have an ipad pro running Photon, a HP pc running waveform. I have a midi track in waveform which changes “live” buttons on the ipad pro, this all works fine and I can control the lights in time with the music.
I have exported the midi file and imported it to bandhelper on a std ipad. When I play a track in bandhelper the midi is sent, but rather than toggling the lights on and off they just flash once very quickly for each midi command, the correct lights flash rather than toggle. I don’t know if its an ipad issue or a bandhelper issue. Any one seen this.
Looking in Bandhelper I can see the midi log and it has the following in it.
10:19:12.044 sending data [90, 30, 7F] to all ports
10:19:12.209 sending data [90, 30, 00] to all ports
10:19:13.768 sending data [90, 32, 7F] to all ports
10:19:13.949 sending data [90, 32, 00] to all ports
Which looks Ok to me I think, assuming that is what is sent over the wire between the devices.
Is there a way to see what midi info is coming into photon ?
Isn’t the first message turning something on (7F=127) and the second message turning the same thing off (0=0), in the first case 0.165 sec later?
Yes it is note on and note off, but as photon is in toggle mode rather than in flash mode then note on, note off will turn the button on and then a second note on, note off will turn the button off. Thing is it all works from my pc with waveform. But I doon’t know what waveform is sending over the wire compared with Bandhelper.
OK, got it. On my BandHelper, when I send a single 127 (note on) with my “On” preset it turns on my scene in toggle mode, and I send the corresponding 0 (note off) with my “Off” preset it turns it off. I’ve never tried sending an on/off pair to see what action that did, but it sounds like it would flash as you said yours is doing.
I don’t know if Bandhelper (on iPad) sends midi differently to the midi on my PC (windows 11). From my pc I have tried sending midi from waveform and MidiEditor and it works flawlessly with photon. Interestingly when I look in MidiEditor it has “Note, Duration and velocity” So maybe it sends a Note on message with duration where as perhaps Bandhelper sends noteOn, noteOff. I am not a midi expert to know what the midi specification is. So it looks like i’ll have to keep the midi note on until I want to turn off the button. Hoping that this makes sense. May be there is a setting in the midi somewhere that sets either on, off or on with durtion.
One thing about the way I am using midi is that it is a midi file that is linked to the backing track of a song as I want the lights controlled a points in the music.
zionplayer, how are you sending the midi commands.
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Yea very different, I am sending individual CC commands from BandHelper on ‘events’, like a button push or change of guitar patch, that kind of thing. I did a midi automation file from Reaper once as an experiment, but I don’t use it.
Bit of an update. Using a Korg nano I get the behaviour that I want. Installed MidiScope and see that the nano outputs.
90, 30, 7F Note On
80, 30, 00 Note Off
So I looked in the .mid file and sure enough it has the nano data in there, so BandHelper is changing the off note from 80, 30, 00 to 90, 30, 00
So it looks like its IOS that is doing the translation. Bandhelper uses IOS to read in the file and send it to the lightening port. SO it reads in 80, 30, 00 and translates that to the new midi 90, 30, 00.
So in Photon are you looking for the “note on, note, velocity” or just the “note on, note” ie are you looking for 90, 30 ? as the new midi uses the velocity of 0 to signify note off.
I saw your response to an issue and had a related question. I am learning midi and dmx on the fly. The question revolves around “note on” and “note off.” I have tried switching between latch and toggle but still struggle. Sometimes Photon 2 turns off a light when I expect it to turn it on and Vice-versa. Could I simply set the values at “0” or “127” and resolve that? That is, would “127” always turn on a fixture? Thanks.
I don’t have much insight into the matter but I am trying to accomplish the same thing you are using Multitracker to run tracks and midi. It’s going pretty well so far but I struggle with the on/off issue.
Hi, So I finally tracked down the issue. I have a laptop outputting via USB to a midi converter. I have another midi converter to get back to USB for the Photon2 ipad. In this scenario everything works as long as I have both the input and output of the 2 converters connected. Now using an iPad to output via USB to midi converter then another converter to get back to USB, in this scenario I have only the output midi from the output iPad connected to the input midi of the Photon2 iPad. Anything else does not work and gives intermittent results.
Now in your situation you have everything on the one iPad, so maybe it is some internal communication that is not working as expected.
The other thing that I have found is that I can only send one midi command at a time and that there must be more than 30 milliseconds between commands. Be that on to off for one light or on for 1 light and on for a different light. I use latched on all light buttons as I want lights to stay on from one midi track to the next. ie, sound mode. I have a blackout button which is in flash mode to turn everything off.
I see that someone has posted some video of this all working, it might be worth contacting them as it would appear that they are doing exactly what you want all on 1 iPad.
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Thanks for the response. I’m going to try the 30 ms gap this week. I really appreciate your thoughts on the matter.
Here is my configuration, I make the MIDI files on Logic Pro and import it into midi preset in BandHelper on the same iPad as Photon. All the presets on Photon are in flash mode (except the strobes which are in toggle mode) the iPad is connected via a Lightning - network adapter to an Enttec module (network-Dmx)
I had a similar issue, because my guitar processor which I use to send note on commands is getting a little old and some buttons will double trigger a couple of note on midi messages, sometimes. My resolution was I discovered that if you set up two buttons in photon, both with the same midi Note, then photon will toggle between them. This has the nice benefit that with one midi note you can have two different scenes. It has been very nice for me both solving my “double note” issue, and making my show better.