Controlling the APC40 explained

ShelLuser's icon

Hi gang!

When it comes to accessing the several aspects of Live then we have access to some outstanding documentation (such as the Live Object Model). But when it comes to control surfaces we're left a bit to fend for ourselves.

I say "a bit" because Max / M4L does come with some helpful abstractions which provide access, but the thing is... I don't like them. No offense intended, and I do recognize (and respect!) the work that went into those. Its just that I like to do things myself and cut out as much overhead as I can.

Alas; to make a long story longer: last weekend I had some quality time to hack away at the APC40 and managed to gain control over its transport section (play, stop, rec buttons) and the matrix and wrote it all up, including some false assumptions. I also packed up my whole project including all the m4l test devices I made and provided that for download too.

If interested, and I hope you'll find it useful, you can find my blog post here.

estevancarlos's icon

Thanks for this. I just posted a message asking for more information on the topic.

ShelLuser's icon

hehe, I noticed. Thanks for your comment on the blog.

Just a heads up: I'm not done yet. This was but an intro, but I've dug quite the hole in the mean time, there is a lot more coming where this came from. My plan is another post this weekend, but we'll see how that turns up.

Spip's icon

Huge work ! Thanks for sharing it.

I don't have enough time at the moment for reading it deeper but seems to be pretty interesting and useful...

ShelLuser's icon

Hi Spip,

Thanks!

Well, right now I'm simply writing up everything I discovered, so all my theories, achievements and failures and the reasoning behind it. As mentioned in the blog post; anyone can point & click but I'm trying to get a grip on the "why" and "how" behind it all. Even though its mostly speculating.

But you can expect a new addition to the tutorials section on my website within a few weeks. That will go over everything I explained in the blog posts but in a somewhat more technical ('straight to the point') manner.

I'm also planning on some kind of overview like C'74 has made with their "Objects per function" lists.