Virtual Serial ports with Bome Midi Translator Pro

Bome Products
1

I would like to use the Serial Port output of MIDI Translator to connect to a virtual serial port created by the Eltima Virtual Serial Port Emulator (VSPE) software.

The virtual serial port create by VSPE does not appear in the Outgoing → Serial Ports list.

How can I use my virtual ports?

Thanks!
Rowland

2

Hi and welcome to the community!

I’m not sure if VSPE uses conventional type serial ports (COM1 COM2 Etc). See if you can configure it that way. You might want to check with them.

For instance, I use ComOCom loopback ports for testing (which are free) . In the below diagrams, MT Pro can see the COM ports but not the CNC ports.
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Again, check with VSPE to see if they have a solution where they look like port classes

Steve Caldwell
Bome Customer Care

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

Thanks Steve, I’m pretty sure I can use com0com as well as VSPE so I’ll give that a try.
Cheers,
Rowland

4

Just set it up and that works, thanks!
My application is probably a bit off the beaten path… I have a Numark MIDI console that I want to use to control a remote ham radio transceiver. I use software that accepts commands via a serial port and I was just able to use the TEST button to successfully issue a command to the remote radio from MIDI Translator → Virtual Serial port. Now I need to learn about mapping the Numark controller buttons, sliders and dials to the various serial port output strings.

I was going to try and code this all in Python but MIDI Translator is going to make this much easier!

Cheers and thanks for the very helpful and fast response!
Rowland

5

Yes, I almost went down the python path before I found the Bome Company. I was (and still am) a customer before I was asked to provide support.

I’m glad you got it working!

Steve Caldwell
Bome Customer Care

Also available for paid consulting services: bome@sniz.biz
6

Thanks again Steve.

I’m trying to convert a variable obtained from a hex input string to a decimal value that is output as 2 hex digits.

Example:

Input MIDI is BF 0A xx
The third byte ranges from 00 to 7F. I capture it to the variable pp.

I need to output the decimal value of pp to my serial port as 2 hex digits - from 00 00 to 01 27.

If the value of xx on the input side was 7F, my output would be:

FE FE 98 E0 14 02 01 27 FD

The next to the last two hex digits are the 01 27 - decimal value of 7F hex, output as two hex digits.

I tried this text as the output string using ASCII Text as output type:
\xFE\xFE\x98\xE0\x14\x020%d pp%\xFD

The log seems to indicate it’s sending the \xFE etc. out as text, not hex bytes:

170: IN 0.4 Control Change on ch. 1 with CC#:9 (0x09) and any value set ‘pp’ to value=64
171: OUT 0.4 wrote \xFE\xFE\x98\xE0\x14\x02064\xFD to COM15 [Numark2]

Thanks,
Rowland

7

Hi Rowland,

Here you go. I set it up to send both decimal as you specified and also the liberty to show in ascii hex format.

hex-to-dec-and-ascii-2021-04-30.bmtp (1.4 KB)

Steve Caldwell
Bome Customer Care

Also available for paid consulting services: bome@sniz.biz
8

That’s great, thanks so much Steve!
Who knows why the engineers decided to mix hex and BCD in one command string but probably have BCD registers to load for volume control.

Great support, I appreciate it :slight_smile:
Cheers,
Rowland

9

Yes, some engineers thing more like engineers rather than users. I’m sure it was just easier to implement that way or they may have done the implementation in haste and later discovered just to leave it as implemented.