How to "install"/use MaxieControl in Max5/6 on windows

MaxMSP
tabsel's icon

tabsel

I stumbled upon the MaxieControl: http://xfade.com/max/maxie
If it's onscreen simulation of the Mackie Control, sending and/or receiving Mackie Control protocol MIDI data, then it's absolutely the thing I'm searching for.
I own Max5/6 but I am a total novice concerning file formats/organization for max patchers/projects, so bare with me:

Can anyone please help me, what I have to do exactly to open the MaxieControl in max5/6? There's no .maxpat file or similar in the download, no file has a file extension, the "MaxieControl" file seems to be a binary file, unlike max5/6 patcher files...

What am I supposed to do to get MaxieControl running?

Thank you very much
Tab

jvkr's icon

jvkr

This stuff is created with maxmsp 4 or 4.5, probably on a macintosh, which explains the missing extensions. Basically they could all receive the extension mxb (max binary). The file MackieControl is the main patch you need to open. All the other patches are so called abstractions. They are patches, but used (referred to) in the main patch as if they were objects. Some of them are used to fill bpatchers. More about abstractions you can find in help:
https://cycling74.com/docs/max6/dynamic/c74_docs.html#abstractions.

The developer has violated an important rule: to never name an abstraction as an existing object. Therefor opening MackieControl results in a big mess (in 6 even worse then 5). Three abstractions (Button, Capture and Transport) should be renamed (e.g.: xButton, xCapture, xTransport).

Max Patch
Copy patch and select New From Clipboard in Max.

Then the main patch needs to be updated. It would be too complicated to explain, so I did that. Launch max, open a new patcher window and save it into the same folder as the other stuff. The name could be MackieControl.maxpat. Copy and past below into this empty patcher and save again. Also you need to install Peter Elsea's Lbuild object, which is used in this patch.

tabsel's icon

tabsel

wow, thanks a lot for this!

Now I only need a little help on how to install the Lbuild object, please?

Chris Muir's icon

Chris Muir

I haven't touched this patch in some years. jvkr is correct about the naming issue, but to be fair, when this patch was written capture and transport didn't exist, and button was still a built-in object so there were no search path problems at that point.

I've been meaning to revisit this patch, but my MackieControls haven't been hooked up to my Max computer for a long time. At any rate, it may still be a while before I can make time to address any issues with this patch.

tabsel's icon

tabsel

Ok, thanks all for your valuable help, work and feedback. I got the patch running.
It isn't quite "complete", but I can learn some things about the MCU midi/sysex implementation to sometime create my own MCU emulator on windows, so thanks a lot!

Tab

jvkr's icon

jvkr

> but to be fair
I understand. By chance the other day I was looking for Mackui HUI control specifications. Is the sysex data in your patch based on this standard, or is it device specific?

@tabsel
Installing is maybe too big of a term. Make a new folder (e.g. inside your documents folder) and name it 'max 3r party' or something alike. In this folder you can keep all downloaded externals from 3rd party developers. Then in max you need to find the 'File Prerences' (which is in the options menu on mac) and add a new path that points to this folder. I think you need to relaunch max.

Edit: that was just a few seconds too late.

tabsel's icon

tabsel

Mcu is different from hui