[LAU] Len's $3 MCP MIDI Controller

[Len Ovens]

On Fri, 18 Dec 2015, Philip Yassin wrote:

> I stumbled upon this on Len's website and was wondering if it works with an USB
> keyboard in a recent distro..? Because quite frankly this is exactly what I need
> :)

Yes, I have used this with two USB keyboards as two controllers to test 
the mackie control code in Ardour. My main PC keyboard is a PS/2 so I had 
three plugged in at a time.

It will also work with Bluetooth keyboards... for example a Wii 
controller.

Anything that generate an event* file that looks like a keyboard.

It does take a little bit of looking to find out which /dev/input/event* 
file to use as device. I have found using the /dev/input/by-id/* files is 
more specific... the by-path may be better.

I have not touched tha code since I got it working as it is pretty basic 
and just works. The worst part is dealing with what is normally a root 
owned device from userland because jack is userland. Basically, Create an 
input group, add yourself to it, drop the supplied file into whatever 
directory your distro merges udev commands. And the input devices will be 
owned by the input group.

At the time I did this, I had just started coding again and the Jackd API 
was much easier to understand. I would be better in the long run to make 
the output/input an ALSA MIDI device. (safer) Though it seems there is a 
way to monitor key strokes that the xserver is seeing too. Be careful in 
other words.

--
Len Ovens
www.ovenwerks.net