Comments on: Wireless MIDI Hack: XBee + MIDI Hardware = No Wires

By: Wiley Wiggins

Wiley Wiggins — Thu, 14 May 2009 11:44:53 +0000

I’ve been looking for something like this to echo key hits from my playing to VDMX, so I can get some interactivity with my visuals without having to worry about anything but the song I’m already playing. If there’s already a commercially available transmitter though, I might save my xbee for something more exotic.

By: Gian Pablo Villamil

Gian Pablo Villamil — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 22:39:46 +0000

You might also want to try S2MIDI instead of the Korg driver, it’s an open-source serial to MIDI driver:

http://www.memeteam.net/2007/s2midi/

It will appear to the system as a MIDI driver, and you can configure it to listen to any serial port, including the serial over USB returned by the FTDI drivers.

By: limor

limor — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 13:10:14 +0000

@charlieH the photo is a little confusing but it is, in fact, unidirectional. Only keyboard->computer

By: limor

limor — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 13:05:48 +0000

@galapagoose its 6ms

By: CharlieH

CharlieH — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 05:47:43 +0000

@dan Just FYI, the M-Audio MidAir is bidirectional.

By: Peter Kirn

Peter Kirn — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 22:26:49 +0000

Latency appeared to be within reasonable limits. The problem is, variables — as you play more complex stuff, as you add other wireless devices as Limor describes, the latency added by the computer, etc. So more research is needed. :) Could be interesting, though.

By: galapagoose

galapagoose — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 19:28:33 +0000

i guess the burning question on my (everyone’s?) lips is what kind of latency is there with a simple ping? whilst i’m not sure i see any artistic benefit of the wireless midi thing, it could be one more reason to push that laptop off stage and have peoples eyes on you, not your glowing apple logo…

oh no! then we’ll have to start performing again! ha

By: limor

limor — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 14:29:51 +0000

@dan 9600 baud is just an example, you can go as high as 115k or as low as 2400. 9600 is just to indicate that it -doesnt- have to be 31250 which is not natively supported by windows
also, as you noted, there are lots of commercial version. i checked these out and there may be situations you’d want this sort of thing. as you noted, this is bidirectional. also, it can be used ‘backwards’ such as connecting a non-midi device to midi (wireless battery powered monome?), or midi-to-midi with no computer. xbees also can happily do point-multipoint or mesh. not being forced to use a MIDI-interface may make interfacing easier, especially if you dont want to go thru a MIDI library. if you -just- want computer to keyboard this may not be for you. but if you want to connect computer, arduino and laser harp all together, it could come in handy! :)

By: dan

dan — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 14:05:44 +0000

Cool hack!

About $70 worth of components though, and a lot of work for something that isn’t near as “plug and play” on multiple OS’s as this $120 M-Audio “MidAir” thing is:

http://keyboards-midi.musiciansfriend.com/product/MAudio-MidAir-Wireless-Receiver-MIDI-Interface-?sku=700538

It says it uses 2.4GHz as well, maybe they’ve just commercialized the use of Zigbee for wireleess MIDI (anyone have one to open up and find out what chipset they’re using)? But the wireless part of this thing is unidirectional, not bidirectional like the XBees.

One last thing – Limor, correct me if I’m wrong here, but doesn’t leaving the host-based XBee configured to 9600baud cause a bottleneck in the bandwidth? If the FTDI chip in that cable can’t talk to the XBee faster than 9600, then if you send lots of MIDI data from the remote device (e.g. by moving the pitch bend wheel) then wont it get “clogged up”?

By: TJ

TJ — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 13:34:21 +0000

Fantastic.