For those who’s not familiar with the concept, it’s a system which allows two-way communication between plugins and some sequencers, and the Novation hardware controllers that supports this. In my case a Novation Remote SL.

I found a thread with a help-patch and a template, and it works great, (thanks Mitch!) but I though it would be even better if parameter names and values could be sent to the controller via the software.

BTW, here is the thread containing the template and the help-file I mentioned:

http://www.cycling74.com/forums/index.php?t=msg&goto=127129&rid=0&srch=automap#msg_127129

I have somewhere an analysis of the sysex dump command and I had relative success sending commands to my controller but the problem is that it isn’t possible to update individual values and a whole template has to be ‘dumped’ to the controller and stored and memory.

While this works, it isn’t ideal. If I can find the analysis I can perhaps make a quick patch if you wish.

Cheers

Brad

—– Original Message —–
From: fairesigneaumachiniste
Date: Tuesday, September 23, 2008 2:45 pm
Subject: [maxmsp] Re: novation automap external?

>
> The automap is just a sysex command to the controller. Because
> the SDK is not available (still) we can only attempt to figure
> it out from trial and error.
>
> I have somewhere an analysis of the sysex dump command and I had
> relative success sending commands to my controller but the
> problem is that it isn’t possible to update individual values
> and a whole template has to be ‘dumped’ to the controller and
> stored and memory.
>
> While this works, it isn’t ideal. If I can find the analysis I
> can perhaps make a quick patch if you wish.
>

To clear a display, send the following message:

F0 00 20 29 03 03 11 04 PID 00 02 02 (04/05) F7 (left / right)

To write text to the display, a message must be formed as follows. “pos” is the position to write to, rowID id the row to write to, defined as follows:
1 2
3 4

Then, the message text (ASCII) followed by F7.

F0 00 20 29 03 03 11 04 PID 00 02 01 pos rowID 04 (t e x t) F7

Does [sxformat] support hex input?

No need for an analysis, as the aforementioned link shows;) I thought the SDK had been available all the time.

So are you saying that it’s possible to do the two-way communication via pure maxing? As described on this page http://developer.novationmusic.com/doku.php?id=remote_sl_compact_development

Doing it without making an Automap Connection to the (automap) Server?

mmturner
(At)
mindspring
(dot)
com

Thanks! I haven’t used PD for months now, but I’ll let you know if I find a need for it;)

Having a quick glance at the SDK it looks like my patches are still relevant so I can add a few improvements.

Quote: Anthony Palomba wrote on Wed, 24 September 2008 00:41
—————————————————-
> Writing to the SL displays
>
> To clear a display, send the following message:
>
> F0 00 20 29 03 03 11 04 PID 00 02 02 (04/05) F7 (left / right)
>
> To write text to the display, a message must be formed as follows. “pos” is the position to write to, rowID id the row to write to, defined as follows:
> 1 2
> 3 4
>
> Then, the message text (ASCII) followed by F7.
>
> F0 00 20 29 03 03 11 04 PID 00 02 01 pos rowID 04 (t e x t) F7
>
>
>
> Does [sxformat] support hex input?
>
>
>
—————————————————-

I tried entering the following command in to sxformat…
[sxformat] 240 0 32 41 3 3 17 4 PID 0 2 1 $i1 $i2 4 hello 247

and got…

sxformat: sxformat: bad argument PID

Does anyone know what “PID” means? The novation documentation
does not specify…

http://developer.novationmusic.com/doku.php?id=remote_sl_compact_development

I have attached an example patch that shows the basic
functionality. The “PID” ended up being the host id. I
included a summary of the documentation at their site.
Give it a try!

Some things to keep in mind…
All text has to be converted to ASCI. It would probably be a
good idea to have some javascript do this.

When you send it an online message, it switches to the automap
template for that host. For Logic it is 39. This is not so
nice because it means that it does not match the nice template
and patch that Mitch wrote.

That being said, it does indeed work. This patch is just a
starting point. One problem is that I would like to be able
to send variable length strings to the RemoteSL. But sxformat
forces me to use $i values, which means I can only write
strings of a fixed length. Is there a way I can send sxformat
a list of values that it would send, instead of the
list that I instantiated the object with?

Some my thoughts on the topic if anyone will find that useful:

After some time i discovered that standard automap feature of displaying text being quite useless in some concert applications when i need very fast changes and have to know exactly where am i. As example – i use max+novation to process sound from piano i’m playing and the usage of my notebook screen for that sort of indication becomes much more comfortable.
So maybe it’s a good idea to use the whole displays to show just text instead of parameter names and values.

The really cool thing might be a connection to that automap 2.0 server with several layouts, but not sure if that mixture of software will work good – i guess it’s better to do similar things (parameters routing) just in one program. I’m now using the lowest row of buttons for switching layouts, this way controlling 8 separate subpatches. i pack all parameters into 1 list and then use a router to distribute it, every subpatch gets a list and takes separate parameter using zl nth. A sort of extremely inefficient code for cpu, but actually this runs quite smooth.

thanks,
-Nav

On Thu, Feb 12, 2009 at 4:07 PM, Lut Lei wrote:

>
> Just upgraded to Automap 3, and the patch is still working. Thanks for
> sharing Anthony!
>

http://home.lagrange.edu/mturner/MitchWebSite/max%20msp%20stuff_files/RemoteSL_Patcher.zip

It comes with a SYX file that must be uploaded on the ReMoteSL, I have no idea if it still works with the latest version of ReMoteSL software. I have not really kept up with recent changes.

Anyway, hope it works for you,
Mitch

ezctl [arg] – creates a new object with 8 outlets that will output the value of its corresponding controller, determined by arg – d=dial (0.-1.), b, b2, b3, b4 = a row of buttons (outputs 1 when pressed,0 when released), p=potentiometers (outputs delta in increments of 0.01), s=sliders, t=transport, sb=side buttons

ReMOTETemp – outputs tempo determined by knob or tap. I can’t figure out how to send a tempo to the machine to initialize though, anyone else figure that one out?

ReMOTEDisp [row] – creates a new object with 1 inlet, which takes in a list in the format {x, text} where x is a number 1 to 8 and text is no more than 8 characters. (will truncate anything longer).
requires argument to specify row because sysex can only take in 9 arguments, and 8 of them are characters so I use the last one for the offset. the display is 72 characters long, so its possible to neatly fit an 8-character string over each column of controls with a space between.

ReMOTELong [row] – writes up to 72 characters to row specified in arg.

In my environment I have a toolbox patch that’s open anytime I’m using max, and it has a ReMOTEDisp object for each row that receives messages to row1, row2, row3, row4. this also allows me to store anything printed in a coll, and dump the coll to recall the screen’s state should anything happen.

thanks