gamepad as midi controller?

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AndersBrontosaurus
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Re: gamepad as midi controller?

Post by AndersBrontosaurus »

Xbox360:
seems like I fail. I think there were more available axis first time I tried but since then, even after restarting computer, this is what I get:

Image

Restarting, inserting xboxcontrol, pressing gamepads powerbutton and then start Buzz, go to assignments on peerctrl and click control plugin settings, that's the way to do it, right?

I placed the template in /gear/generators. Is that correct?

Xboxcontrol keeps flashing. Never a steady green light.


PC Gamepad
Some kind of breakthrough. Today I managed to bind the gamepad to midi.
I do not succeed to move any parameters. I have assigned joystick on gamepad to parameters but nothing happens.
The only success I have is to send the keystroke "z" which means that I can insert C-4 in pattern editor (what a blast!). Hopefully there are more creative ways to use this with scalewalker and patternist. I can also fill up this forum with the letter z. This also gives a hint about how tiring this thread must be to others....

Look at me go! zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz



edit: WTF? suddenly, by repeating the same procedure I managed to control a parameter. Cannot say I did anything new more than just adding the same controller with another name ( so I had duplicates) in view>prefs>midi input. Still I was only allowed to choose the old one...Does this make sense? I made an extra controller called gamepad 2. So I had 2 controllers called gamepad 1 and gamepad 2 but they were the same one. And it worked. Weird... Thought I needed polac midi in but it worked anyway with the built in.
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szaszhareen
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Re: gamepad as midi controller?

Post by szaszhareen »

searching this forum is a pain because of php search limitation "parameter is too common", so don't use the search, use another search engine and type

Code: Select all

site:forums.jeskola.net YOUR SEARCH TERMS HERE
although in this specific instance, it won't help much because tinga's xbox control idea has never been understandably explained in the history of this forum, even going back so far as buzzchurch.com. it gets brought up a lot but as far as i know, no one on this forum has successfully recreated it.

groovelastig used glovepie with a wiimote to control some stuff, though i think his post detailing that is lost to the buzzchurch graveyard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BIxyK_mH0E

i've managed to get some gamepad midi control going, though never in as satisfying a way as tinga is able to, by using midi yoke and a playstation 2 to usb adapter with a glovepie script.

to go even further down the rabbit hole, check out peripheral midi controller, through which i was able to control buzz machines with led strobe lights pointed at a webcam: http://pmidic.sourceforge.net/

reading through the thread here, it looks like the problem is that you're expecting the controller to show up in buzz as an assignable controller, just like it were a usb midi keyboard or something, but this is not how it works; you have to have some intermediary software like midi yoke and glovepie.

trying to recall from memory how i did it, it's something like:

install midi yoke
make sure buzz sees midi yoke in preferences as an input device (i think midi yoke will show up as a bunch of input channels in prefs (loopmidi can apparently be used here instead but i haven't tried it))
you will probably have to use polac asio driver
now you need a way to send data from your gamepad to midi yoke, this is where the glovepie script comes in
you can use midiox to see if data is being sent from glovepie to midi yoke
now select midi yoke channel as your midi input device in buzz
now you can right click on params and select the midi yoke channel you want to control the param

the problem comes with the glovepie script, it's tough to write one that works like you want it to, and the support is nonexistent as carl kenner's forum fell to spambots long ago and he was unable to fix it given his limited resources. he quit answering support questions and moderating the forum because he couldn't handle it on top of his IRL workload. strangely, no userbase moderators stepped up to help, which is surprising considering how powerful the software is. i guess now it has probably been overshadowed by something else and everyone moved on after the "hey i can midi wiimote" fervor died down in 2007.

anyway, all of this is only relevant if you are trying to use a pre-xbox 360 gamepad. from what tinga has described, if you use an xbox 360 gamepad, peerctrl will recognize it right off the bat as something to control it's x and y params. note that it's not controlling things like if you right click>assign to controller for any machine; it's only controlling params for btdsys peerctrl, and i think only the x:y params. part of tinga's magic i think is that he finds ways to make x:y do crazy things by chaining up adjustments to these two values to other peer machines which augment that practice.

the template that he posted earlier, you should NOT drop that in /gear/generators. you should open it in an explorer window, and drag and drop it into the machine view. templates are .xml files that hold a bunch of machines and parameter settings. you can find your templates folder in */documents/buzz/templates

try creating some templates by making a base configuration, like bass3>filter3>ninja delay, making the params the way you want them, then drag a selection box around those three machines, click the templates tab, and hit create template. you're presented with some pretty snazzy options and you should get it from there. it's like presets, but can be used for groups of machines as well.

that may have generated more confusion than answers, but let me know if it gets you anywhere. i've been after this for a while myself and if you're unable to figure it out i'll make some time to hammer it out with you here in this thread. :geek:
Last edited by szaszhareen on Sun Sep 13, 2015 4:38 am, edited 2 times in total.
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szaszhareen
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Re: gamepad as midi controller?

Post by szaszhareen »

AndersBrontosaurus wrote:Xbox360:

Look at me go! zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
i've not taken a day off in over a month. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz is my way of life now XD
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AndersBrontosaurus
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Re: gamepad as midi controller?

Post by AndersBrontosaurus »

Aaaiiiight!
Thank you Szaszhareen for your long post. That cleared some things for me.

As I wrote above I've managed accidentally to get a regular gamepad to work but in only lasted a while then I managed to disconnect it again in some way. Loopmidi works fine and I've read that most people have problems installing midiyoke on Win8.

About Glovepie there is an alternative called freePIE. I started pestering them last week. Got very good support but as you say, I have to make the script myself. If I manage to learn, I'd like to make a script for the qwerty-keyboard some day...

My learning is slow since I have max 1 night per week to perform my Buzz trial and errorthings but I'll be at it tomorrow night.One thing that I also have to learn is the polac midithings. Have read his website several times.
Anyway, 100% sure I'll be posting here tomorrow again :-/
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AndersBrontosaurus
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Re: gamepad as midi controller?

Post by AndersBrontosaurus »

So. Got myself an xbox360control. Tried it with the command "joy.cpl" and everything works in the test so I assume the gamepad is ok.

I managed to import tinga's template to Buzz
Ny bitmappsbild (3).jpg
Ny bitmappsbild (3).jpg (75.04 KiB) Viewed 7308 times
but don't know where to go from here. I somewhat assumed there would be more axis and buttons if my xboxcontroller was recognized. Anybody?
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AndersBrontosaurus
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Re: gamepad as midi controller?

Post by AndersBrontosaurus »

tinga wrote:At first, xbox ctrl has nothing to do with midi, to make the assignment, the xbox pad has to be connected before launch of Buzz, then open the assignment settings window and click on "Control Plugin Settings", if the pad is not connected, you can't see it in the list.
Here is a template with all the 18 ctrl, for one pad,
The attachment xbox1_ctrl_all.zip is no longer available
.
It's cool that there is no midi for that, same for peertrig, I don't like midi, of course midi is very useful, but many params are 7 bits, I prefer mostly 16 bits params we have in Buzz.
I confirm, midi loop is perfect, I use it for leap motion and it's perfect.
@AndersBrontosaurus, hope my answer can help you, It's really funny DJ stuff, and don't scruple if you have other questions ;)
Sorry for flaming.

I'm using peerctrl 1.6
I have downloaded the pctrl_xinput and placed it in gear/generator/peerctrl. Coonected everything to the computer. Booted up. No luck. Gamepad doesn't show up in "control plugin settings". What have I done wrong? As you can see on the photo below the pctrlxinput.dll is in place. Should it also be visible on the second photo?
1.jpg
1.jpg (181.91 KiB) Viewed 7283 times
2.jpg
2.jpg (29.31 KiB) Viewed 7283 times
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szaszhareen
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Re: gamepad as midi controller?

Post by szaszhareen »

i am going to throw something out there that is totally wack, but i want to know: if you add peerctrl to machine view, then open the x,y window, without doing any other configuration, do the x,y values change when you move the thumbsticks? I'm trying to figure out: where is the x,y input from the joystick coming from, and being sent into buzz? what in buzz is listening for windows to say "hey there is some input here bro and maybe it's important"
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AndersBrontosaurus
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Re: gamepad as midi controller?

Post by AndersBrontosaurus »

Hi. No. Nothing happens.
The thing that should be listening to windows is the peerctrlxinput I assume.
According to Tinga it should look like below and it isn't.

I lack all Xinput axes as in my photo in post above. I also don't have the xinput-alternative in photo below.

Those of you who got this working, are you using windows 7, 8, 8.1 or 10?
What version of Peerctrl are you using?
Are there different versions of xinput?

I use
Win 8.1,
peerctrl 1.6 and
xinput from 2008-01-18 16:12
Attachments
buzz_xboxpad_ctrl_1.PNG
buzz_xboxpad_ctrl_1.PNG (7.88 KiB) Viewed 7241 times
buzz_xboxpad_ctrl.PNG
buzz_xboxpad_ctrl.PNG (97.91 KiB) Viewed 7241 times
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AndersBrontosaurus
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Re: gamepad as midi controller?

Post by AndersBrontosaurus »

Gggnnnhhhh!
I should have done this ages before.
Reinstalled the xboxdriver (for win7). Now it works!
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tinga
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Re: gamepad as midi controller?

Post by tinga »

AndersBrontosaurus wrote:Gggnnnhhhh!
I should have done this ages before.
Reinstalled the xboxdriver (for win7). Now it works!
I was sure it was something like that :lol: , because BTDSys PeerCtrl is perfect, Ed Powley said that we must use just one PeerCtrl, but it's just for midi, for other controls, you can have as many as you want, if you use four pads, it's better to have four peerctrl.
Cool that you find these fucking drivers, and it will be cool if we share templates using Snowglobe ScaleWalker and xboxpad, so many funny things todo.
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AndersBrontosaurus
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Re: gamepad as midi controller?

Post by AndersBrontosaurus »

tinga wrote: ...it will be cool if we share templates using Snowglobe ScaleWalker and xboxpad, so many funny things todo.
Oh. I look forward to that day. Scalewalker and patternist controlled by xbox.
Until I can upload any interesting templates I must however grasp the basics. :-)
River Cricket
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Re: gamepad as midi controller?

Post by River Cricket »

This is something I myself was interested in, and the solution that ended up working best for me is a program called "Fergo JoystickMIDI" (google it, it's freeware).

Going from memory here, my joystick's not set up at the moment, but as I recall you load Fergo, create assignations in Fergo (pretty standard auto-listen "wiggle the stick / push the button, then assign CC value" sort of stuff), route the output to a LoopMIDI device, and then have Buzz listen to that device. You can then bind the inputs in Buzz using the standard Preferences > MIDI Input technique.

If that's still a bit vague, or if you're having troubles, please let me know and I'll write up a more in-depth tutorial.

It's insanely simple and just thinking about it is making me want to dig out my gamepad and figure out a good method of mounting it - knobs and faders and wheels are great, but you just can't beat an X/Y input for certain shifting phasing sounds.
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AndersBrontosaurus
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Re: gamepad as midi controller?

Post by AndersBrontosaurus »

I remember getting errormessages everytime I ran Fergo. Maybe I should try it again. But your favourite, peerctrl+xboxpad is a nice combo too. :-)
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