Music Keyboard for TamTam?

[Gary C Martin]

On 30 Nov 2008, at 22:16, Erik Garrison wrote:

> On Sun, Nov 30, 2008 at 12:20 AM, Gary C Martin  
> <gary at garycmartin.com> wrote:
>> On 30 Nov 2008, at 01:29, Erik Garrison wrote:
>>
>>> On Mon, Nov 17, 2008 at 8:23 AM,  <pgf at laptop.org> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> ignacio wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> On Mon, 2008-11-17 at 04:24 +0000, Gary C Martin wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On a more disappointing note I found this ticket "G1G1 tamtam  
>>>>>> suite
>>>>>> should respond to MIDI keyboard input" from 10 months ago.  
>>>>>> Closed.
>>>>>> Wont fix :-(
>>>>>>
>>>>>> https://dev.laptop.org/ticket/6031
>>>>>
>>>>> All "wontfix" means is that they're waiting for someone with a  
>>>>> stronger
>>>>> itch to scratch it ;)
>>>>
>>>> i really have no idea how such devices are normally presented to
>>>> the systems, but is it possible that the keyboard is consists of
>>>> more than one USB device (i.e., via a built-in hub) and that not
>>>> all the drivers are present on the XO?
>>>>
>>>
>>> FWIW, The M-audio systems abide by open midi specifications and are
>>> platform-independent.  I don't know about the driver situation.
>>>
>>> There is a program which can be used to dump midi signals to stdout.
>>> It might be a good test as it's very simple to configure and its
>>> results are very clear, unlike the audio programs you'll want to  
>>> use.
>>
>> ... and it's called??? Gah! ;-)

Just for reference, after connecting the USB Midi keyboard amidi -l  
gives me:

[olpc at xo-0C-E6-BB ~]$ amidi -l
Dir Device    Name
IO  hw:1,0,0  Keystation 49e MIDI 1

> I'm not at an XO or my development machine now, but looked around the
> web to try to find some information to help.
>
> See: http://www.4front-tech.com/pguide/midi.html

Will go read.

> Does the system have a /dev/midi* when you plug the device in?

Yep, I get a /dev/midi1

> Do you see anything interesting in the kernel logs returned with  
> dmesg?
>
> Unfortunately our kernel configs aren't online anywhere i can find...
> but I'll check to see if it's enabled.  My guess would be not, but
> perhaps I'm mistaken.
>
>> I'm trying to hack my way through coding csound, but I've not had  
>> much time
>> to play so far. A magic midi data dumping tool would be a nice  
>> shortcut to
>> test – FWIW, I can see my M-audio correctly listed on the USB as an
>> available MIDI input device, but not got any further yet.
>
> Perhaps cat /dev/midi*  if the file(s) exist.

Fab, yes, cat/dev/midi1 gives me wild ascii characters each time I  
press a key, looks like both note and velocity (this particular  
keyboard doesn't emit pressure but I have another one somewhere that  
does), also other controls (volume, pitch blend & modulation) trigger  
comms.

I'd say the drivers are good to go, and I need to get back to reading  
csound documentation and try a demo to pickup the incoming midi feed.

> Erik

Many thanks,
--Gary