MIDI Buddy output

Hi, I was testing out different delay speeds for the MIDI Buddy output delay box.
Was monitoring the log window and noticed it’s not changing its output speed when I change the delay. Even at 2000 ms, the log window is still a blur of incoming MIDI messages when moving the mouse. At 2000 ms I should be able to count to two before I see another input line, I think. ?

Hi Trevor,
I don’t remember off hand because it has been a few years since I worked on MIDIBuddy, however if I recollect, the delay is only applied to the relative mouse movement messages and not the absolute mouse position messages, however you should be able to turn off the relative messages with a hotkey (Control-Alt-F)

You can suspend and restart absolute mouse movement messages with Control-Alt-P that acts as a toggle.

So if you send Control-Alt-F and Control-Alt-P at project start, both types of messages will get paused. If you want absolute mouse position, send another Control-Alt-P, capture the new position and another Control-Alt-P to pause again. The relative mouse message do not actually tell were you are on the screen but rather just attempt to move the mouse relative to it’s current position (which you can override with MT Pro). I have one use that uses this feature to ensure his mouse pointer never goes outside of his desired zone.

Steve Caldwell
Bome Customer Care


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

Comment redacted.

Yes, MIDIBuddy is my product. Not a Bome Product. I built it for a specific need for one Bome customer and a few others are also now using it. My objective was to make it a stop gap solution until someday when Bome MIDI Translator would have this feature. Since there was not much demand, I decided not to pursue further. I’m not sure where the mouse awareness feature is on the roadmap but I can check for you. If you send me an email, I’ll be happy to refund the purchase price if you don’t want to use MIDIBuddy (and me to help you with further MIDIBuddy related integration questions). It is not buggy, but the setup is probably more complex for most users. You really need to know what you are doing to make it work correctly for you.

For your need I think Control-Alt P toggle is all you really need. (However you may have remapped it to a different keystroke in the MIDIBuddy.ini file, which as an after the fact request I got.) Relative mouse movements continue and fill the log but the load on the PC is minimal when you turn logging off in MT Pro. You get a warning in MT Pro when you turn logging on (unless you disabled it)

Let me know what you want to do. Again, I’m sorry it is not working out for you!

Steve

Yes, and Control-Alt-F is designed to freeze mouse movements as well. Again, haven’t looked at it in a few years but the Readme file that comes with it did call this out.

The delay function was for the original implementation for mouse location only and was never incorporated into relative mouse movements which was requested after the fact. Relative mouse movements also distinguishes between multiple attached mice.
All mouse positioning messages are relative to the primary monitor only.

Although it works as documented, I agree that a re-write might be a good idea. With that said, I’d rather it get incorporated in MT Pro as software development is not my forte. Also, I have no skill on Mac development so MIDIBuddy is and will always be a Windows solution only. Consider it a stop gap for a small niche need.

So my bad on my post talking about Control-Alt-F as a solution. Again sorry!

Steve Caldwell

Hi SuperTrev,
I understand you’re frustrated, and I wish we could heal that right away. We take everybody’s issues very seriously in this forum.

But please try to not attack people or use sarcasm. Any of that is counter-productive and won’t help anyone. Please keep the language polite.

It’s not a mystery. You can just ask and we’ll answer. Plus, it’s probably already answered in our forum.

Hope you understand!

I should not have wrote that.
My apologies Steve.
I will keep my peace unless I come across an implacable problem and have to ask.

Hi Trevor,

No worries. I really do care and hopefully will find another way to accomplish what you want. If I understand correctly, you don’t want mouse position pointer sent to MT Pro unless you ask for it so that it doesn’t flood MT Pro with MIDI data. Not that MT Pro can’t handle it or that it really doesn’t impact system performance. Just a way to minimize MIDI traffic until you want it.

Steve Caldwell
Bome Customer Care


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

Hi Trevor, @SuperTRev

As a MIDIBuddy customer, I offer you another possible solution. Similar to MIDIBuddy this solution involves another “Helper” application which I would provide you for free, but first let me describe it to see if you think it would work for you.

  1. You would no longer use MIDIBuddy, instead you would use the new application
  2. In MT Pro when you want to get the pointer position you would have an outgoing action on a translator that calls the application along with the two global variables that you want to store the results. Something like “getmouse ga gb”,
  3. The application would get the mouse position and then via command line interface send sent back the X and y positions capture to MT Pro and trigger a timer to let MT Pro know it is done.
  4. You could then use these global variables for further processing in MT Pro. It would be important to note to not call this program too often as command line processing takes some time. In this case, there is actually:
    a) No MIDI exchange with the helper application
    b) The helper application only runs when you call it so there is no resource utilization until you call the application

The solution would also require a Beta version of MT Pro that provides for command line application exchange. Florian ha agreed that I can provide you a link to this Beta Version of MT Pro. Also this version of MT Pro would need to be set for only one instance (not allowing multiple instances) as otherwise, the application would not know which instance to call-back.

If interested, email or private message me and I can set this up further and send you the necessary links for the MT Pro Beta version, the helper application and an example MT Pro project file to use it.

Steve Caldwell
Bome Customer Care


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

Thank you for being so understanding even after that abusive post.
I’m still ashamed that I got so ticked off that I wrote that.

I think that I will still stick with MB for the foreseeable future, but thank you for the offer. I’m really dug into the project. It will take a whole lot of time to redo everything. The only thing that set me off was the broken delay time. It works if the delay box will actually do the delays that I tell it to.
I’m still wanting to pay for those custom update requests; previously thought that I would have the money by now.

Anyway, I do have a question though. MTP struggles to click and drag with the mouse. It just executes too fast I think. A translator ‘mouse button down’, a second one, ‘move mouse to position x y’ and a third one, ‘mouse button up’. It never works. Is there a way to slow down the drag or something?

Sorry again for that comment. You didn’t deserve that.

**EDIT
I wanted to upload an .mp4 video showing what I’ve done on the dj controller so far, but the forum won’t let me.

I’ve never had a problem with click and drag if I put enough delay between the initial click, the move mouse, and then click up.

Also the new version of MT Pro will have the ability to enable and disable MIDI ports and routes, so even if MIDIBuddy is sending MIDI, I don’t think it will be seen by MT Pro if the incoming port from MIDIBuddy is disabled. Something I will look for in the future. If I get a chance to spend quality time with MIDIBuddy, I’ll see what I can do about the delay, but right now I think that using keystrokes to talk to MIDIBuddy is not a good idea and eventually would like to do 2 way MIDI communication which adds a lot of complexity to setup of the MIDI ports. I found the programming simple MIDI messages is pretty straightforward but MIDIBuddy communicates with SysEX which is much more complex but is required to send numbers larger than 127.

Anyway, the offer is still open if you want to try the new methodology using command line to request mouse position. Just let me know.

Steve Caldwell
Bome Customer Care


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

And for large files like MP4 it is probably better to upload to YouTube or something and just provide a link on the forum.

Ok I’ll try with delay in between the holds and drag. I use delays a lot but didn’t think to use them here. Maybe FLS just can’t keep up with the drag either.

The future versions of MTP sounds exciting.
I don’t have a Youtube channel right now to host any videos. That’s down the road. Here’s a Google Drive link for now.

It’s just using the ticky knobs and platters. I haven’t yet shown anything else. I had to cram to make the file size as small as possible. It’s up on the Image Line forum too if you want.