# The MIDIMonster Named for its scary math, the MIDIMonster is a universal translation tool between multi-channel absolute-value-based control and/or bus protocols. Currently, the MIDIMonster supports the following protocols: * MIDI (Linux, via ALSA) * ArtNet * Streaming ACN (sACN / E1.31) * OpenSoundControl (OSC) * evdev input devices (Linux) * Open Lighting Architecture (OLA) with additional flexibility provided by a Lua scripting environment. The MIDIMonster allows the user to translate any channel on one protocol into channel(s) on any other (or the same) supported protocol, for example to: * Translate MIDI Control Changes into Notes ([Example configuration](configs/unifest-17.cfg)) * Translate MIDI Notes into ArtNet or sACN ([Example configuration](configs/launchctl-sacn.cfg)) * Translate OSC messages into MIDI ([Example configuration](configs/midi-osc.cfg)) * Dynamically route and modify events using the Lua programming language ([Example configuration](configs/lua.cfg) and [Script](configs/demo.lua)) to create your own lighting controller or run effects on TouchOSC (Flying faders demo [configuration](configs/flying-faders.cfg) and [script](configs/flying-faders.lua)) * Use an OSC app as a simple lighting controller via ArtNet or sACN * Visualize ArtNet data using OSC tools * Control lighting fixtures or DAWs using gamepad controllers, trackballs, etc ([Example configuration](configs/evdev.conf)) * Play games, type, or control your mouse using MIDI controllers ([Example configuration](configs/midi-mouse.cfg)) [![Build Status](https://travis-ci.com/cbdevnet/midimonster.svg?branch=master)](https://travis-ci.com/cbdevnet/midimonster) [![Coverity Scan Build Status](https://scan.coverity.com/projects/15168/badge.svg)](https://scan.coverity.com/projects/15168) # Table of Contents * [Usage](#usage) * [Configuration](#configuration) * [Backend documentation](#backend-documentation) * [Building](#building) + [Prerequisites](#prerequisites) + [Build](#build) * [Development](#development) ## Usage The MIDImonster takes as it's first argument the name of an optional configuration file to use (`monster.cfg` is used as default if none is specified). The configuration file syntax is explained in the next section. ## Configuration Each protocol supported by MIDIMonster is implemented by a *backend*, which takes global protocol-specific options and provides *instance*s, which can be configured further. The configuration is stored in a file with a format very similar to the common INI file format. A section is started by a header in `[]` braces, followed by lines of the form `option = value`. Lines starting with a semicolon are treated as comments and ignored. Inline comments are not currently supported. Example configuration files may be found in [configs/](configs/). ### Backend and instance configuration A configuration section may either be a *backend configuration* section, started by `[backend ]`, an *instance configuration* section, started by `[ ]` or a *mapping* section started by `[map]`. Backends document their global options in their [backend documentation](#backend-documentation). Some backends may not require global configuration, in which case the configuration section for that particular backend can be omitted. To make an instance available for mapping channels, it requires at least the `[ ]` configuration stanza. Most backends require additional configuration for their instances. ### Channel mapping The `[map]` section consists of lines of channel-to-channel assignments, reading like ``` instance.channel-a < instance.channel-b instance.channel-a > instance.channel-b instance.channel-c <> instance.channel-d ``` The first line above maps any event originating from `instance.channel-b` to be output on `instance.channel-a` (right-to-left mapping). The second line makes that mapping a bi-directional mapping, so both of those channels output eachothers events. The last line is a shorter way to create a bi-directional mapping. ### Multi-channel mapping To make mapping large contiguous sets of channels easier, channel names may contain expressions of the form `{..}`, with *start* and *end* being positive integers delimiting a range of channels. Multiple such expressions may be used in one channel specification, with the rightmost expression being incremented (or decremented) first for evaluation. Both sides of a multi-channel assignment need to have the same number of channels, or one side must have exactly one channel. Example multi-channel mapping: ``` instance-a.channel{1..10} > instance-b.{10..1} ``` ## Backend documentation Every backend includes specific documentation, including the global and instance configuration options, channel specification syntax and any known problems or other special information. These documentation files are located in the `backends/` directory. * [`midi` backend documentation](backends/midi.md) * [`artnet` backend documentation](backends/artnet.md) * [`sacn` backend documentation](backends/sacn.md) * [`evdev` backend documentation](backends/evdev.md) * [`loopback` backend documentation](backends/loopback.md) * [`ola` backend documentation](backends/ola.md) * [`osc` backend documentation](backends/osc.md) * [`lua` backend documentation](backends/lua.md) ## Building This section will explain how to build the provided sources to be able to run `midimonster`. ### Prerequisites In order to build the MIDIMonster, you'll need some libraries that provide support for the protocols to translate. * `libasound2-dev` (for the MIDI backend) * `libevdev-dev` (for the evdev backend) * `liblua5.3-dev` (for the lua backend) * `libola-dev` (for the optional OLA backend) * `pkg-config` (as some projects and systems like to spread their files around) * `libssl-dev` (for the MA Web Remote backend) * A C compiler * GNUmake ### Build Just running `make` in the source directory should do the trick. Some backends have been marked as optional as they require rather large additional software to be installed, for example the `ola` backend. To build these, run `make full` in the backends directory. ## Development The architecture is split into the `midimonster` core, handling mapping and resource management, and the backends, which are shared objects loaded at start time, which provide a protocol mapping to instances / channels. The API and structures are more-or-less documented in [midimonster.h](midimonster.h), more detailed documentation may follow. To build with `clang` sanitizers and even more warnings enabled, run `make sanitize`. This is useful to check for common errors and oversights. For runtime leak analysis with `valgrind`, you can use `make run`.