FR: Get all current values from target hardware

Question

Hey guys,

 

Well I've been really worried about how to get my VG99 to send all its settings for a patch, so I can synchronise the midi designer layout controls, with the values currently held on the unit.

It appears that a straightforward feature could handle this...

All my controls are Sysex data write controls.

For example, I have a slider which is a sysex midi control. It's command writes a value to a parameter called A/B Balance

A) Sysex to write value 0x41 to A/B balance parameter appears like this

F0 41 00 00 00 1C 12 60 00 20 13 41 2C F7

B) Sysex command to query value of A/B Balance parameter appears like this

F0 41 00 00 00 1c 11 60 00 20 13 00 00 00 01 6f f7

The unit now reads the value and sends a Sysex command back to me telling me what the parameter value currently is. And it makes perfect sense...what the unit sends me is the same format I would send it to wriute the value....

C) Response sent from unit after I send B) above

F0 41 00 00 00 1C 12 60 00 20 13 41 2C F7

C = exactly same format as A

This means if you add a "GET ALL VALUES FOR LAYOUT" button then it would iterate through all the sysex controls, changing the write format to a read format, and my unit would send each parameter and therefore synchronise the layout with the parameters in the current patch.

So you change the 0x12 in the above to 0x11 and set the 00 00 00 01 section to be the number of bytes in the V-Value of the midi string and away we go!

That would be triple awesome!!!

Of course the new "GET ALL" feature should be assigned to a button in the layout that I can add as a sub control of a NEXT PATCH / PREVIOUS PATCH buttons, so when I select NEXT PATCH, midi designer then says ok, gimme all your parameter values for this patch, and synchs all the control on the layout accordingly.

Amazing!

Comments

specific to all Roland gear, only VG99, or this is a general thing that we don't know about?

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I looked into this on a couple of synths and the methods of data sending from units seem to vary quite wildly :(

 For example, my JD990 requires a simple instruction for it to send the values to MD but it then sends just a list of values in a certain order without any location details :(

Edit.  I really don't want to miss a chance if this could work and am 'looking' into it further as I am no expert with this stuff by quite a long shot :)

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Having read around some more this may be Roland specific. That's a tough one.  I'm still thinking this through...

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This is awesome cnurse :)

It seems that this behavior is indeed indicative of Roland kit.  Such a great idea you have there!

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There is another more brute force way to achieve what I want to do, and it would not be system specific. It would be an extension to a control that sends Sysex.

Having a control that could send a list of Sysex commands could achieve virtually anything, without you having to introduce Roland or VG99 specific features. I could add a list of Sysex commands to this control that would force the VG99 to send back each parameter. I'd still need Midi Designer to calculate the checksum for each sysex command in the list, but rather than MD iterating through the controls, you just scrap my last idea and give me a control that sends a sequence of Sysex commands, one after the other, then we can do almost anything with it.

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This would be truly groundbreaking - no other Ipad midi controlling app can do that as of now so Midi Designer would be the first.

As simple and needed thing is to read patch dumps  from hardware no one seems to implement this on the Ipad ...and this is number one feature lacking at least for me.

Vsts written to control specific hardware do it ..so why not implement it in Midi designer ? I love the interface, the way knobs react especially is way ahead everything else, and if this is implemented I would definetely dump all the control vsts I am using right now.

Fingers crossed!

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Yeah the patch dump idea being mapped to midi designer presets would be cool. The way presets are handled would have to change, and I guess there is some challenge in understanding the format of patch dumps to make this generic.

Thanks for the vote...seems quite on here at the moment hey?

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The main thought on our side is that every MIDI target does this differently, and hands over a massive sysex with all the values, and that it has to be parsed according to different rules for each manufacturer. We're hoping this isn't the case. Any evidence for this position would help.

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Any progress on this?

As I've mentioned in another thread, I've based my Yamaha TQ5 template on the old YSEDITOR for Atari, which reads .syx files and SysEx dumps from hardware. So if it's possible on Atari, it should be on iOS?

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Hi Vestibul, practically anything is possible on iOS. For MIDI Designer, however, if it's not one sysex-per-control, it's probably not possible. See my comment here, please:

http://mididesigner.com/qa/4271/how-to-receive-and-display-sysex-sends-from-moog-sub-37?show=4295#c4295

Thanks!
Dan

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@vojd, not sure if you're still active here, but: how would you see the UI working for MIDI Designer, to describe the parsing into multiple controls? Thanks.