Running Python on BomeBox?

Bome Products
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1

Perhaps a very niche request (or maybe a potential goldmine for BomeBox sales), but might there be a way to effectively run Python scripts on BomeBox, using its hardware (including ports)?

I’ve seen this repo of Open Wrt for BomeBox, but don’t know where to start and avoid bricking my BomeBox (if this repo is even relevant).

Any thoughts? :nerd_face:

2

Hi and welcome back!

You would be on your own for any OpenWRT development and indeed it is possible that you could brick your BomeBox.

I would suggest getting a Raspberry PI and then running Bome Network on that. I think the PI community would have a stronger area of support. You could use USB MIDI or attach a MIDI DIN to USB adapter to your RPI.

Steve Caldwell
Bome Customer Care

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

Thanks for replying, Steve. Yeah, I’ve already done and do similar with an RPI. I was just thinking and hoping there might be a way to use the dedicated MIDI hardware of a BomeBox for similar purposes. Depending on the complexity of setting it up, it seems to me like this ‘off-label’ usage could be a major boon and selling point for the BomeBox. Shame I’d be on my own if trying such a thing too.

5

Hi Gary,
thanks from me, too, for this interesting idea. Unfortunately, there are more aspects to consider:

  1. You can log into the BomeBox. We explicitly kept this possibility for whoever wants to ‘mess’ with the Linux system running on the BomeBox. But, for good reasons, this is not advertised and not well documented. In a nutshell: in the advanced config, add a public key for SSH. Then you can log into the BomeBox via SSH using public key authentication.

  2. although we use the open source OpenWrt system as foundation, the Bome MIDI engine is not open source. It runs on the BomeBox and claims all MIDI devices (when in use), so running a Python process in parallel will not work well. Only either Python or the normal BomeBox routing could use a given MIDI port. And such a separate Python process would have no access to the Bome Network MIDI ports.

  3. Any of that is outside of our support. When changing the underlying Linux system, it is relatively easy to lock yourself out, or brick the box, so that a reset to factory defaults might not work anymore.

So, even if it made more sense to install and use Python on the BomeBox, we could not assist you in any way. It’s a shame, of course, as I like hacking, too. On the upside, we do have plans to add a real scripting language directly to the Bome MIDI engine (probably LUA and not Python for memory reasons). I know that’s not the same, but it’ll go a long way. Please understand that this is just a plan and no commitment at this time, and there’s no definite time plan, either.

6

Thanks for your response, Florian, and I do completely understand. This. however, is still very good news (even as a consideration for future development).

And yes, I was aware of that advanced config option, but admit I hadn’t looked into it much yet. I appreciate the points you make in #2 as well and I was mainly looking for a way to essentially use the BomeBox hardware with an entirely Python ‘backend’ and no access to the network ports required.

All food for thought though and thanks again for the response. :smiley: