I am very excited about the potential this may hold. Our church is using a 2 camera PTZ (Point, Tilt, Zoom) system. We have been broadcasting over FaceBook Live and have had great response from those not able to attend. Sometimes however we do not have anyone upstairs to switch the cameras and video feed. I would love to be able to do the following:
Use a wireless MIDI controller to generate trigger and control messages
Send these messages to our iMac upstairs and use MIDI Translate to convert the incoming MIDi messages into SERIAL commands from the Vaddio API
Send the SERIAL messages from MIDI TRANSLATOR out through a USB to SERIAL adapter to the Vaddio Production View HD
Here is some info on the Production View HD protocol:
Vaddio uses simple control protocols to accomplish custom programming with the ProductionVIEW HD. The Communication Specification, API and Programming Language are listed below and definitions are listed on the next page. Note: All commands must be followed by a carriage return.
Communication Specification Communication Speed: 9600 bps (default) Start bit: 1 Stop bit: 1 Data bits: 8 Parity: None No Flow control
Control Port - RS-232 on DB-9F Connector
PIN# Signal
2) TXD
3) RXD
5) GND
All other pins - Unused
I have attached the Serial Control API info below.
Thanks for any help or suggestions.
I look forward to updating everyone on my progress.
So it seems that using an iPad I can do MIDI over Wi-Fi.
So using a generic MIDI control App I could send MIDI messages that way.
The question is what could I use on the Mac that could receive those signals?
The Mac is hardwired to the network wireless router. So is there some sort of virtual MIDI port I could run on the Mac to intercept the MIDI commands and pass them to MIDI Translator and out to the USB serial port?
I believe your idea is quite possible. For receiving MIDI over a network from your controller, you would likely need some sort of wifi gateway/router on your network or maybe even a wifi dongle on your Mac if configured correctly. You could even use BomeBOX.
Then you could use either Bome-Network Pro or Apple’s RTP-MIDI to expose an incoming MIDI port to Mac. Any exposed MIDI port on your MAC could be used to connect Bome MIDI Translator Pro.
Would would need to define midi mappings for your controller and then set up the translators to put out ASCII text from your mappings to your connected Serial Port. The serial port should be able to be configured by MT-Pro and you would need to make sure you dongle cable pin-outs match that of your camera controller.
I would recommend you start by setting up your USB to Serial Dongle on your MAC and then downloading an evaluation copy of MT Pro (it will run for only 20 minutes at a time). This will minimize your initial investment. Hopefully you can use some virtual MIDI controller on your MAC for testing and setting up your mappings.
One that is working, phase 2 would be getting the network midi and wifi connections working and purchasing a copy of MT Pro.
Sounds like an interesting project. Let me know via email if you would like to contract will me to help get it working. Just send me an email and I will be happy to scope the project and send you a bid.
Thanks so much, I will keep that in mind.
Looks like I will be getting the USB to SERIAL Adapter today and tonight I will be at church where I can run some preliminary tests. I think I am going to try and build to test translators here on my MacBook with the serial and iPad controllers at home first and then see if I can load them into the church iMac.
Very excited to see what happens.
Simeon
PraiseTracks.com
Yes, I believe Florian said he provided you with Beta Version of MT Pro for testing. I ran some preliminary tests on MT Pro 1.8.2 and ran into some problems. I ran same tests on Beta 1.8.3 with no problems at all. (Using virtual loopback COM port software instead of a real cable)
** UPDATE **
The USB to SERIAL came in today. I downloaded the beta version of MTP and installed it on my MacBook for testing.
I was able to get the iPad Wireless WiFi setup as well and found a really simple MIDI control surface App that gives me some very simple options for the control surface.
I have setup the Translator and it appears that signal is going out to the SERIAL Port. In a few hours I will be able to test this on the video switcher itself.
Well I tried getting everything running on Wednesday and had some mixed results. I am not able to do anything further for a few days but I am hopeful I can get this to work. I was able to capture the commands from the Vaddio but not getting any response when I try sending commands out. The SERIAL indicator in the event section is lighting up I am just not sure what the Vaddio is actually seeing.
I think I am going to try setting up a VIRTUAL SERIAL PORT to capture the output just to see what is going out of MTP.
Pins 2 and 3 on your connectors reversed. Not likely if one is female and the other is mail but if you are using some sort of adapter cable this could be an issue.
Wrong baud rate, stop bits or parity.
Null modem virtual port would only help if the issue is in the software.
If you have a standard ascii dumb terminal you can use to send commands to your VADDIO, that would help. Looking around, these days they are hard to come by or expensive. Those old dumb terminals were cheap as dirt back in the 70’s and 80’s but now they look like since there are so few left, they come at a premium price, even on Ebay.
Sometimes I wish I had kept mine.
Another idea is if your MAC has terminal emulation software to try and just type the commands from there and see if you VADDIO responds.
I have been away and not able to work on this for a few days. I should be able to try again next week as I will be able to get back over to the video room to try some other things and troubleshoot some more. I will keep you posted for sure. I might try taking some video of my process to share to see if it might help get some insight as to what might be going wrong.
I got to spend some more time trying this out. It seems that I can capture the SERIAL messages coming from the VADDIO but it does not seem to be receiving them when I sent them back out. I recorded a short video illustrating my setup and the steps to try getting this to work. Maybe someone can see where things might not be connecting or something
1) Could you post your project file? I’d like to see better on how you have the translators set up.
2) Why did you not show the log window? It will probably show you a lot more detail on what is happening. You show the event window but not the log window (with incoming and outgoing checked)?
Another thought. Once you capture MIDI and are ready to test, make sure you uncheck capture midi. It seems to be messing things up with my tests if I leave it checked.
Also looking at the manual the command should probably be “ProgIn 1” not “Prog 1” which is probably the output status from the Vaddio device when you press the button.