Can't get MIDI => Text to work

Bome Products
1

Ultimately I want to map a button on my FCB-1010 (foot controller) to the ENTER key. At the moment I have it mapped to ‘Hello, world\n’ with the cursor in Notepad to see if anything is happening.

I used 'MIDI Learn" MIDI input when creating this trigger, to verify that the port is active in Bome, and I have the MIDI parms correct for this foot particular controller button.

When I press the foot controller button (with the cursor in NotePad), nothing happens. I also don’t see anything in the Log window.

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Thanks!

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Hi and welcome to the Bome community!

First of all to learn the control, you have to click on the desired message in the capture area. This will transfer the message to the incoming trigger.

In my attached example I also added a rule to translator 1.0.

Perform "Focus"

This calls the second translator (1.1) that has an outgoing action to focus on “notepad.exe”.

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I added a delay of 20ms of the text action to give the computer time to focus the application prior to sending the message.

The translators in the first preset are just housekeeping translators that I use for most of my projects.

I have my alias set up as follows:

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You can learn more about aliases from this tutorial.

I ensure the the alias is used in the preset 1 so that all translators within this preset will use the input routing from the FCB.

For more information about device selection, see this tutorial.

The “\n” notation does not work in the outgoing action. You have to use the ENTER key instead.

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Hello-World.bmtp (1.9 KB)

Steve Caldwell
Bome Customer Care

Also available for paid consulting services: bome@sniz.biz
3

Testing posting a reply at all. I’m having trouble…

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New users usually have problems posting links. I upgraded you to a basic user level so it may work now.

5

PARDON THE ALL CAPS — IT’S THE ONLY WAY I CAN THINK OF TO ENSURE MY QUESTIONS ARE VISIBLE. (I’VE REREAD YOUR TEXT MULTPLE TIMES AND WATCHED ALL THE VIDEOS.)

First of all to learn the control, you have to click on the desired message in the capture area. This will transfer the message to the incoming trigger.

IS THERE SOME SORT OF VISUAL CUE THAT THIS NEEDS TO BE DONE/HAS BEEN ACCOMPLISHED? WHEN I TRY THIS, I SEE NO CHANGE IN THE GUI.

In my attached example I also added a rule to translator 1.0.

WHY? (JUST TRYING TO UNDERSTAND.)

Perform "Focus"

i HAVE SOME VIRTUAL ROUTING THAT I ALWAYS WANT TO USE. THIS PARTICULAR TRIGGER IS FOR ABLETON ONLY. I ALSO USE DORICO AND DIGITAL PERFORMER, FOR WHICH THIS TRIGGER WON’T APPLY. IS THERE SOMETHING I NEED TO DO FOR THIS TO WORK OK?

This calls the second translator (1.1) that has an outgoing action to focus on “notepad.exe”.

I added a delay of 20ms of the text action to give the computer time to focus the application prior to sending the message.

The translators in the first preset are just housekeeping translators that I use for most of my projects.

DO I NEED YOUR INIT AT ALL?

I have my alias set up as follows:

WAS THERE SOMETHING WRONG WITH MY ALIASES?

You can learn more about aliases from [this tutorial]

I ensure the alias is used in the preset 1 so that all translators within this preset will use the input routing from the FCB.

For more information about device selection, see

The “\n” notation does not work in the outgoing action. You have to use the ENTER key instead.

So I’ve done what I thought were the trivial adaptations necessary to have your sample do what I need to do, namely ‘Hello world\n’ => Return, and Application Notepad++ => Ableton.

(The idea is that you select a clip, and ENTER starts/stops recording in said clip. Keyboard ENTER works.)

Still no joy:

(BTW, Windows 10. Rebooted my machine on general principles.)

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If you look at the incoming action on the translator, it should show that it has transferred correctly.

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Otherwise, you can set it up manually but a click on the desired incoming MIDI message in the capture MIDI area should do the trick. You generally only need to edit this area if want to set something like “any value”.

This ensures that the target application gets the keystroke. If you want to manually focus the application first, that is fine. You can remove this line and the focus translator. Just remember, without it, the text will be sent to the application that is currently in focus.

Maybe not, but I generally use it for various housekeeping tasks like setting up global variables, setting certain presets active, etc.

See this tutorial and make your own judgement.

No, I usually just let new people know about this because it can be a real time saver for more complex projects and if you change your MIDI environment.

I’m not sure whether Ableton Live will do this as you would need to focus the specific control within Ableton Live instead of anywhere within the application windows. You might need to first put your mouse over the desired clip. Also, you may want to set it up as a shortcut other than text.
Or maybe a click action over the correct coordinates.

I couldn’t way why your system rebooted. Maybe the enter key is over a system restart control.

Steve Caldwell
Bome Customer Care

Also available for paid consulting services: bome@sniz.biz
7

You have to give focus to the clip first. How else will it know where to click “Enter”? :slight_smile:

I rebooted my system on purpose just cuz — certainly didn’t mean to suggest that it rebooted itself unbidden!

Your example works. So I just took that, changed what little I had to, and it works for what I need. Why my version didn’t work will just be another one of those Life Mysteries that I don’t need to solve.

Thanks for your assistance! In addition to being effective, it was also quick!

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