Interested to see what luck people have had with the LP Pro so far. 
Launchpad Pro - Connecting to External Hardware:
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Interested to know what this capable of with OT as well. I’m thinking of either this or the akai mpd232
Are there any iphone/Ipad apps that could be used for the same purpose?
I’m interested in taking on writing a custom octatrack FW for the LP Pro. I have some experience programming cortex with C bootloaders so this should be a doddle, if a bit time consuming.
Has anyone been working on something similar? I can’t see any OT-specific github forks or anything from googling around, but perhaps someone here knows more.
What would you like to see? Keeping in mind the MIDI messages the OT will receive, and the fact that there is no permanent storage on the LP Pro.
Things I’m thinking of implementing:
Session: Combination of the trig button modes: 1-16 mutes, 1-16 track trigs, volume control
Note: rough clone of novation’s note mode. Chromatic trigs for tracks, 64 slice mode for tracks, chromatic entry for midi auto channel, highlights for selectable root note, scales. Assignable velocity/pressure > param for tracks. Momentary/toggle for notes.
Device: Every parameter on grid for tracks. push to assign value. 8-button ‘fader’ for coarse value, some combination for finer resolution.
User: Basic performance-focused sequencer. Have to see what I can squeeze into the memory, but hopefully some kind of motion recorder to quickly have the LP do midi param sweeps. Notes/velocity/pressure to auto channel.
Other things: dedicated pages for 8xVolume, 8xPan “faders”, keep Novation’s velocity > fade time, single button for sending param dump request to OT.
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I’m working on something similar just in the sense that it’s an OT-oriented MIDI controller in C, but 1) I’m targeting the Raspberry Pi as a host and the LP Mini as the input/display so 2) I’m using the PortMIDI library and 3) I’m a C noob so 4) I’m going very slow and 5) my code is a mess. Also I haven’t thrown anything up on Github yet because of caveats #4 and #5
All of your ideas make a lot of sense and are similar to ones I’d like to implement, although I am shooting for something a bit more “modular” that probably won’t work well on the LP Pro. Slice mode will be huge - please see the thread for the wacky stuff you have to do to get this to work, if you haven’t already:
Velocity/pressure to param is a fantastic idea. I don’t have an LP Pro but I want to try this with my old Trigger Finger at some point.
If you can, I would recommend implementing some kind of “snap shot” behavior. There was a guy working on this in Max before and I would also like to implement a version of this at some point. It might be weird on the LP Pro with no user-writable non-volatile memory but I think you might still be able to come up with something useful if you want to take a swing at implementing that.
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Cool! Keep it up, I wouldn’t worry too much about 4 and 5, throw it up there if you get a chance! My github handle is the same.
Can you clarify what you mean by a ‘snap-shot’? It should be possible to get track params from the OT and save them temporarily, mess with the controls, and hit ‘recall’ to dump them back. Might be useful for going on an FX tangent during a performance. I’ll think about it
I think as far as the MIDI is concerned, all that’s required is to send the right CC for the slice just before the note trigger. The user would have to have the track set up correctly, of course, and there’s no way the controller would know how many slices are there. If you set up a grid of 64 buttons with each having a different slice CC position, there will be a button for each slice, you just get a lot of buttons playing the same slice if there are, say, only 16.
It’s the kind of thing that’s practially impossible to do on a standard MIDI controller, but should be dead simple in C.
I think as far as the MIDI is concerned, all that’s required is to send the right CC for the slice just before the note trigger. The user would have to have the track set up correctly, of course, and there’s no way the controller would know how many slices are there. If you set up a grid of 64 buttons with each having a different slice CC position, there will be a button for each slice, you just get a lot of buttons playing the same slice if there are, say, only 16.
It’s the kind of thing that’s practially impossible to do on a standard MIDI controller, but should be dead simple in C.[/quote]
Right, you would certainly think that 
Quite a few people in that thread tested that, and it turns out there’s a 70-100ms delay if you try to do it that way. I came up with a method that in my testing has been solid but it is awkward for the user - basically you have to (at least temporarily) eschew use of the scenes and the crossfader.
Thank you for your encouragement on throwing up my C code. I will get it up as soon as I can get it to a place where sane humans can read it and it at least suggests the direction I want to go in with it.
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Also, as far as snapshots, that’s basically it, a collection of values for a group of controllers. Being able to “play” these like notes could be interesting and useful. Sort of like trig locks. They could also be useful for creating trig locks as you could store parameters you want to apply to a group of locks and recall them as you input the trigs.
Has anyone tried that with a TM-1? Sounds like Elektron identified “not being able to trigger slices from external midi” as a bug, so we should all keep banging on the bug report channel about it and see what they come up with. IMO the simplest thing would be for Elektron to stick a track option to map velocity to start pos… Anyway, I’m not going to worry about it. I agree it’s something you should be able to do with the OT, but I’m not a big slicer.
Sounds like a good project. I don’t have a launchpad and I’m not a programmer. I do have a Quneo and enough spare time to mess with pure data so over the last 2 years I’ve done tons of experiments and implemented most of the things you are talking about.
good luck!
Has anyone tried that with a TM-1? Sounds like Elektron identified “not being able to trigger slices from external midi” as a bug, so we should all keep banging on the bug report channel about it and see what they come up with. [/quote]
I don’t think anyone’s tried it with a TM-1 but I also strongly doubt that the issue is with MIDI transmission speed.
Yup, I think it’s been reported but I doubt it’s a high priority for Elektron. Plus the last 3 OS updates had some nasty bugs that caused most users to stay on an older version, even now, so I think they are a little gun-shy.
Hi,
Yes, that is true. MIDI note to slice trigger is not a feature of the Octatrack.
There is no plan for implementing such a feature at the moment unfortunately.
Regards,
Simon M
Well, I guess that’s hosed then. Agree with that, I’m still on ‘B’. I don’t use the stuff that’s bugged and all the ‘regression from…’ in the latest updates isn’t confidence-inspiring.
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I’m programming the Launchpad Pro open-source firmware for Digitakt. I started as just a tool for multitimbral synths but adapted and made modes specifically for Digitakt. Is there still interest in this?
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Yes! I’ve seriously been dreaming about this for digitakt. Please let me know if you need someone to test.
Awesome. I’ve been playing with the thought of hacking around with the LP but never found the time. It is such a capable controller.
Will it be standalone straight into the DT over USB and fully powered or will it be some kind of Max patch that a computer is needed for?
It has direct MIDI out via a 5 PIN DIN (however they have a little cable that comes with it for this).
So it is completely stand-alone… no computer needed.
But you can also use its USB Midi if you have the set-up for it.
(It powers via USB or a power supply)
Ok, I forgot the DT don’t have USB host functionality so you have to run a DIN cable. Still pretty cool.
Here’s a demo of a few of the modes, using the MIDI in and out, and a breakdown of what’s going on (to a degree)
https://fenixsong.com/launchpad-digitakt-video-breakdown/
However, I didn’t get to the “Pure Digitakt” mode yet, mainly because I need to practice with it more
I have a few more ideas for Modes just for Digitakt that I haven’t built yet, but should be easy to implement based on how I’ve coded it.
Let me know what you think.
Also, let me know… do you already have a Launchpad Pro?
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