/playdate_midi_bus

Primary LanguageProcessing

Playdate Midi Bus

screenshot screenshot

Midi to Playdate comms using a computer running Processing as an intermediary (demo video on YouTube): press keyboard note > computer midi > Processing Midi lib > Processing serial out > mn(noteNumber) received by Playdate. Written to allow Midi keyboard control of a synth in Modular Play (an upcoming Playdate title).

  • Setup your computer midi environment.
  • Install Processing.
  • Install The Midi Bus using the Processing Library Manager.
  • If you encounter errors replace the midibus .jar at /Users/user/Documents/Processing/libraries/themidibus/library with the latest download.
  • Connect Playdate via USB (close the Playdate simulator if running for any reason, it occupies the serial interface of the connected Playdate).
  • Run the sketch, note the address of your Playdate serial interface and update line 10. Rerun.
  • Check the available midi in devices and update line 38 with the correct index. Rerun.

If all setup correctly the running Playdate app will receive calls to a mn(midiNote) method in its main.lua, to add midi note support that's all you need to implement:

function mn(midiNote)
	print("Received midi note: " .. midiNote)
	...
end

function playdate.update()	
	...
end

If you encounter problems you may need to restart your Playdate to try again.

Read the blog to see how this works: Playdate Serial Comms