I've recently bought a copy of EZDrummer, a VST plugin that acts as a virtual drumkit. I'd really like to hook into it from Ruby code so that I can create loops and drum patterns programmatically. To be honest I am not sure even where to start. Presumably I have to create a VST host which can load the plugin and then hook into it somehow. I am a Ruby developer so that's the language I'd be looking to implement this in. Any pointers in the right direction?
Since you bought a VST plugin, I assume you have some sort of DAW as well. Before you start trying to host a VST from within ruby, try the following smaller projects:
Generate a MIDI file from ruby. Load
the MIDI file into your DAW, and
play.
Stream live MIDI data from your ruby
process to your DAW. On Windows, you
can do this with ReWire, on OSX, you
can create an IAC bus in the Audio /
MIDI setup app.
If you need more direct control of EZDrummer than this allows you, then go down the path of trying to host the VST from within Ruby.
Related
I'm trying to find a good GUI library I could use to create a program on the computer that connects to a microcontroller by USB. I've never done any GUI work before but I have done a lot of webpage design/tools. We are going to program the microcontroller with C but I don't think the GUI will need to be C. It needs to work on Windows, so probably compile on Windows too. I've also never done any USB transmission but I'm hoping to take it one step at a time.
Right now I'm looking at using GTK but it needs a bunch of other things to download with it. I'm also going to look at QT and someone else suggested making a Windows Forms Application. There's a lot of options out there so I'm having trouble figuring it out.
As for my requirement, it just needs to be a very simple GUI that has a few control buttons, a display area (info from microcontroller), a notification area (basically error messages go here), and maybe a graph. I've included a prototype GUI help give you an idea of what I'm doing.
Edit: It needs to run and compile on Windows. We don't really have a budget for it, free open source is preferred. I don't need something elaborate and fancy, I just want to get it done as fast as possible.
We are using a TTL-232R cable, UART interface. I know nothing about USB transmission, school has crushed me.
From what you've specified, I would set base-camp up at Java.
Java in Eclipse to write the code.
Java Swing libraries (helped by the WindowBuilder plugin for Eclipse) to "draw" the GUI. It is very easy to create "Windowsy" GUIs using these.
JFreeGraph libaries to allow you to create graphs very easily, again from within Eclipse.
RXTX library for "virtual COM port" serial communication within Java (it doesn't sound like you're using proper USB, but just RS232 with a USB adapter).
Your created GUI would run on any machine with Java installed, which is not a big ask for the end user. You can even create a Windows executable/installer from the resulting Java files if you wanted it to be a (apparently) native Windows application.
And - bonus - all the tools mentioned are free as a bird.
It will kind of depend on what kind of compiler, IDE, etc you will settle on. If you are going to windows cold, and
money is an issue, then open source is always a good thing to look at. I have enjoyed using eclipse and Code::Blocks IDEs. For C/C++, I use minGW. In terms of GUI plug-ins, HERE are some conversation with GUI recommendations specifically for use with Code::Blocks.
If money is not an issue, I have use National Instruments LabWindows/CVI full dev kit forever. It is one of the easiest ANSI C compilers/IDE I have ever used. It is only ANSI C, but has extensions to make using instrumentation easy. I have written a little USB stuff (not much), sockets, instrumentation, and many GUI apps.
Please comment what tools you currently prefer, I may have other suggestions.
Lazarus CodeTyphon has cross platform native compiler with GUI working on every supported platform. It supports 8 OS-CPU host layers (Win32, Win64, Linux32, Linux64, FreeBSD32, FreeBSD64, Solaris32 and Solaris64), and 25+ OS-CPU target layers. It also incorporates many graphical widgets and SCADA like behaviour with PascalSCADA and other components. There are wrappers for LibUSB.
I would use Microsoft Visual Studio to develop the GUI. They offer a free version called Express. I would use the C# language but MSVS supports other languages as well so just choose whichever you're most comfortable with. The best thing about MSVS is that there are millions of developers out there, which means that you will be able to search for and find lots of examples for how to use an RS-232 COM port or USB interface. I'm guessing that you'll be able to find GUI objects for graphing and other objects as well. (The basic stuff like buttons and edit boxes is all built into MSVS.)
BTW, you need to sort out whether you're using an RS-232 COM port or a USB interface. They're both serial interfaces but they're not the same thing. Either could work.
Can ruby manipulate and work with peripherals like webcams? I would like to create a system that uses a webcam. Is it possible to do with ruby?
You should be able to control a webcam with Ruby. At the very least, you can interface with a Java or native library for the webcam control -- Ruby can easily talk to Java, C, C++, Objective-C...
Ruby is a generally used on the server-side. As such, if you're looking for a solution to interface with a client's webcam from Ruby running on a webserver then the answer is no.
On the other hand, if you'd like to interact with a webcam connected to the server executing Ruby code (or just to execute Ruby code locally) then the answer is potentially yes. I'm not a Ruby programmer but as far as I know while Ruby most probably doesn't have direct support for talking to a webcam, it does support bindings as C-style dlls and you should be able to craft a binding for it to provide an interface for interacting with webcams.
I don't know if such bindings already exist but in case they don't you should be able to build yourself one assuming you know C/C++ or some other language that can export bindings for Ruby.
Is is possible to trap the MIDI signals being sent by my keyboard connected via MIDI-USB in Ruby? If not Ruby, how would I do it in C so I can make a Ruby extension?
Use PortMidi, which is part of the PortMedia project. A little Googling showed several references to existing Ruby bindings to PortMidi, so you may not need to do much/any work to get things running.
What is PortMedia?
PortMedia is a set of APIs and
library implementations for music and
other media.
PortMedia is open-source
and runs on Windows, Macintosh, and
Linux.
Currently, libraries support
Audio I/O and MIDI I/O.
Take, for example, the VSTi Triforce, by Tweakbench. When loaded up in any VST host on the market, it allows the host to send a (presumably MIDI) signal to the VSTi. The VSTi will then process that signal and output synthesized audio as created by a software instrument within the VSTi.
For example, sending an A4 (MIDI note, I believe) to the VSTi will cause it to synthesize the A above Middle C. It sends the audio data back to the VST Host, which then could either play it on my speakers or save it to .wav or some other audio file format.
Let's say I have Triforce, and am trying to write a program in my language of choice that could interact with the VSTi by sending in an A4 note to be synthesized, and automatically saving it to a file on the system?
Eventually, I'd like to be able to parse an entire one-track MIDI file (using established, stable libraries already available for this purpose) and send it to the VSTi to "render"/synthesize it into an audio file.
How would I go about this, and in what language should I look to build the core framework?
Ultimately, it will be used in a Ruby-based project, so any pointers to specific Ruby resources would be nice as well.
However, I'm just trying to understand basically how the API of a VSTi works. (I've realized that this question is very much related to the question of building a VST host in the first place, albeit one that can only save VST outputs to file and not play them back, and with considerably smaller scope)
Well, since you asked, the ideal language for a project like this is going to be C++. Although there are wrappers for higher-level languages such as Java & .NET for the VST SDK, I couldn't find one for Ruby (though I did find this rather cool project which lets you program VST plugins in Ruby). So you will be stuck doing some degree of C/C++ integration on your own.
That said, you have basically two options here:
Write a VST Host in C++, and launch it as a separate process from within Ruby.
Integrate your Ruby code directly to the VST SDK, and load the plugin DLL's/Bundles directly from your code. This is probably the cleaner but harder way to accomplish your goal.
I wrote up a VST host programming tutorial on my blog awhile back which you may find useful in either case. It details how you open and communicate with VST plugins on both Mac OSX and Windows. Once you have gotten your host to load up the plugins, you need to be able to either send MIDI events directly to the plugin, either by reading them from file or some type of communication between your Ruby code and the VST host (ie, a named pipe, socket, file, etc.). If you are unfamiliar with the MIDI protocol, check out these links:
The MIDI technical fanatic's brainwashing center (silly name, serious resource)
The Sonic Spot's MIDI file specification (in case you need to read MIDI files)
As you might have already figured out, VST is fundamentally a block-based protocol. You request small blocks of audio data from the plugin, and you send along any MIDI events to the plugin right before it processes that respective block. Be sure not to ignore the MIDI delta field; this will ensure that the plugin starts processing the MIDI event directly on the desired sample. Otherwise, the plugin will sound a bit off-tempo, especially in the case of instruments.
The VST SDK is also based around floating-point blocks, so any data you get back will contain individual samples in the range { -1.0 .. 1.0 }. Depending on your desired output format, you may need to convert these to some other format. Fortunately, there seems to be a Ruby binding for the audiofile library, so you may be able to send your output into that in order to generate a proper AIFF/WAV file.
In all, it'll be a fair amount of work to get to your desired end goal, but it's not impossible by any means. Good luck!
I'm trying to get a list of the bluetooth addresses (the MAC address-like hex digits unique to each bluetooth device) within range of the bluetooth device inside my mac in the ruby language.
I'm hoping to make my work publicly available, so it'd be nice if it was platform agnostic.
Googling only helps so much:
hcitool etc aren't available on OS X: snippets.dzone.com/posts/show/5764
Ruby_Bluetooth is nearly 4 years old, and I can't make it work!: rubyforge.org/projects/ruby-bluetooth/
Herval is attempting to continue that project, but the git repo is only a day old…
I don't need to create any services or interact with bluetooth in any extensive way, only list the device ids that are within range.
Does anyone have any other ideas? (Even for non ruby, platform specific hcitool equivalents?)
Have you thought about leveraging a Java Bluetooth API and using it from JRuby?
This might make it easier to create platform agnostic code.
For instance bluecove looks like it would cover all the major platforms.
You could go the non-platform specific route and use the native frameworks instead.
For example
RubyCocoa for the bridge between Ruby and Objective-C
OSX's native Bluetooth API Call out to this from Ruby using RubyCocoa
There are other options for other platforms, such as Ruby and Win32OLE/COM.