New editor for MB SEQ V4+ under development

[southpole]

Dear MIDIboxers,

I would like to draw your attention to an editor for MB SEQV4+ SD Card contents i've been developing over the past few months.

The program is still in alpha-state but I think it is time to announce it here in the hope of getting some early feedback.

For now the code lives in my github repository here:

https://github.com/gbrandt1/MBseqv4pEditor

The code is scripted in Python 3 with a Tkinter GUI (but there is also a command line shell).

To test, plug the SD card from the MB SEQ V4+ into your computer and open it in the editor.

Looking forward to any comments you might have.

Have Fun

southpole

[Hawkeye]

Very cool!

I've not tested it yet, but i think despite batch processing it can also help to visualize what is going on in a sequence. To be able to show everything in a track at once on a big screen is awesome! :)

Best regards and keep up the good work!
Peter

[TK.]

Very good! :)

A nice feature could be to transfer the files directly via SysEx, so that the SD Card doesn't need to be removed. With some special firmware support (e.g. reload pattern when file has been updated) this could even allow on-the-fly editing.

Unfortunately the file transfer protocol isn't properly documented, information has to be puzzled together from MiosFileBrowser in MIOS Studio: https://github.com/midibox/mios32/blob/master/tools/mios_studio/src/gui/MiosFileBrowser.cpp

sendCommand() is used to request the directory tree, and the read/write files, and receiveCommand() shows how incoming data has to be handled.

Best Regards, Thorsten 

[southpole]

Hi TK,
nice you like it, i wasn't sure since it's not JUCE based ;-)
doing some SysEx in Python is certainly interesting, i will put it on the to do-list.
a faster (available) realtime solution is to buy a WiFi enabled SD card like Toshiba Flash Air.
but i guess the reload of the files needs to be triggered by hand then.
Cheers,
Gerhard

[TK.]

Hi Gerhard,

I like Python as well and use it sometimes @work, e.g. because it has very powerful libraries for data processing and visualization, and last but not least it's easier to share code with younger colleagues :)

I'm not sure how well Python supports MIDI on different operating systems meanwhile - I selected Juce many years ago to get a stable solution for Windows/MacOS/Linux, but I'm missing scripting/quick exploration capabilities.

An OS independent Python based MIOS32 communication library would definitely be valuable (but I've no bandwidth to do the groundwork :-/) - you've a use case where such a library would be helpful.

Best Regards, Thorsten. 

[southpole]

Hi Thorsten,

It's definitely a good idea and (technically) feasible.
A lot of the MIDI groundwork should be already covered by the rtmidi module and just looking what Python based MIDI
sequencers like Braid are doing.

So it's possibly a matter of "just" implementing the MIOS32 SysEx protocol, and the GUI integration, of course.

My first priority is however to finalize file integrity checks during saves and streamlining (= debugging) the GUI before adding more features

Cheers,

Gerhard

[slo]

INFO: controller      : Command do "show_editor (('tracks_editor',), {})"
INFO: mbs4edit.py: show_editor tracks_editor 1
Exception in Tkinter callback
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\xxxx\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python39\lib\tkinter\__init__.py", line 1885, in __call__
    return self.func(*args)
  File "C:\Users\xxxx\PycharmProjects\MBSeq_Ed\view_tk\menus.py", line 41, in open_sdcard
    name = filedialog.askdirectory()
NameError: name 'filedialog' is not defined

I tried running this and got this error. I know nothing about Python but thought it would be interesting to give it a try. On a Win10 computer I installed Python then PyCharm and then installed the required ttkthenmes from PyCharm. The program ran and the window opens all tabs etc. It works but it will not open a sdcard, I just get this error. Should it run from this setup or should I try on a Linux dist?

[slo]

Ok, got it working, ignore above, I went another route.

I installed Ubuntu onto my Windows 10 from the Microsoft store and got it working under WSL1. It was quite a few steps involving an X11 server, the GUI works and looks great, its helpful to see what the V4+ does under the hood! Thanks for this.