a TouchOSC Bridge clone, aimed at linux, written in python.
I wanted to have a TouchOSC Bridge running on a raspberrypi. After researching the options and running into several deadends, I figured out, I need to write my own. Specifically this program aims to achieve the following:
- it works on linux
- it works on ARM
- it doesn't need the
.touchosclayout-files - it can provide virtual midi ports, like the original TouchOSC Bridge from http://hexler.net/software/touchosc
- it is open source
- it advertises the service via
zeroconf - it needs minimal configuration
touchosc2midi is built on top of these pip-installable packages:
pyliblomido(needspython-rtmidiand/or(FIXME!)portmidi)zeroconf
and without these, it wouldn't be such an embarrassingly trivial program.
You will need a recent version of pip and cython
pip install -U pip
pip install cython
pip install touchosc2midi
git clone https://github.com/velolala/touchosc2midi
cd touchosc2midi
pip install .
pyliblo and python-rtmidi need some OS libraries installed (i.e. liblo-dev and librtmidi-dev Debian). Check out https://github.com/velolala/touchosc2midi/tree/master/docker/Dockerfile to see how to install from a plain Debian with python 2.7.
After installation you should have a the touchosc2midi script in your path. Start it with
touchosc2midi
and open the "Midi Bridge" configuration dialog on your TouchOSC device. You should see an entry for your host. Click on your host and click "Done". Now you should have midi in- and out-ports named "TouchOSC Bridge" that you can use with your client software.
This section shows you, how to do more specific midi configurations.
Since touchosc2midi uses mido, it can be configured with several backends (see:
http://mido.readthedocs.org/en/latest/backends.html for details).
By default it tries to mimic the behavior of the original TouchOSC Bridge (see: http://hexler.net/software/touchosc); that is: opening virtual in- and out-ports named "TouchOSC Bridge". Therefore, it tries to use an rtmidi backend by default, since only this backend allows the creation of virtual midi ports.
Unfortunately, it get's more confusing, because rtmidi allows several API's (e.g. 'LINUX_ALSA', 'UNIX_JACK').
The default for touchosc2midi is to use the rtmidi backend with the first available/implemented API.
If you want to change the backend, the command:
touchosc2midi list backends
lists the available full backend strings that you can use for the MIDO_BACKEND=... environment variable.
To make use of another backend, call touchosc2midi like this:
MIDO_BACKEND=<backend string> touchosc2midi
By default touchosc2midi uses virtual ports for midi-in and midi-out. You can, however, connect midi-ports directly. The command:
touchosc2midi list ports
lists all available ports with their ID and their port string. You can connect midi-in and midi-out ports either by ID or by their name string, e.g.:
touchosc2midi --midi-in=1 --midi-out="iConnectMIDI4+ MIDI 11"
Please note, that it is currently not possible to mix virtual and direct midi ports (but I'd be happy to accept your PR for this!).
touchosc2midi tries to detect your main network interface for the network part automatically and you can expect this to work in most cases. You can, however, make it listen on a specific IP address:
touchosc2midi --ip=192.168.0.53
The git repository contains a Dockerfile. To use it:
cd docker
docker build -t touchosc2midi:latest .
Above builds a container with all OS dependencies and touchosc2midi installed. When running, you will need to share the /dev/snd/seq device and expose the OSC receiving port, e.g. like this:
docker run -p 0.0.0.0:12101:12101/udp --device=/dev/snd/seq:/dev/snd/seq touchosc2midi:latest
Note, that when using docker, the zeroconf service announcement does not work, so you'll have to configure your ip address manually on the touchOSC device.
This program is published under the MIT License. See LICENSE for details.