Setup tutorial for TouchOSC on an Android Phone to control your DAW - Uses PD and Midi Yoke

[Rural Health Punk]

I wanna as I you could make your own TouchOSC template design to work for an Android like the iDevices

[binaryzeromusic]

Not sure if this is the right place for this thread but couldnt see any other place to put it. Moderators feel free to move if I have it wrong.

Anyway I was looking all over the net for a nice walkthrough to get Touch OSC up and running on my android with Ableton and Reason. Found alot of info but nothing collating it into one place. Couldnt even find it here and this is the first place I always look. Certainly there has been the odd reply to other folks problems but nothing coherent. So I figured I would share the steps I took to getting Touch OSC up and running in the hopes that it will be of use to others.

I dont think I have missed any stages but feel free to comment anything you feel may be important to the process.

This is a setup guide for Android 2.2 froyo users who have a wifi enabled Windows 7 PC to get TouchOSC enabled on their phone and controlling their ableton, reason, whatever, live onstage. I reckon its safe to say XP/Vista users are good here as well. There are detailed guides on the hexler website for ipod, iphone users.

All this worked fine for me, of course I cannot guarantee you will be trouble free so take it step by step if you are unsure.

You can find more info over at - http://www.hexler.net

Setup TouchOSC on your Android

1 - download touch osc from the android market to your phone and install.
2 - On your PC go to start and in the search bar at the bottom type in CMD. double click the CMD icon when it appears to open an command prompt.
3 - Type in this command - ipconfig - on the prompt.
4 - look for your IPv4 IP address within the generate4d info.
5 - On your phone in Touch OSC go to network
6 - add the IP address to the host section, leave the ports as they are
7 - make sure you have the simple layout selected in Touch OSC
8 - hit done and exit Touch OSC for now.

Installing PD and Midi Yoke on your PC - Windows XP/Vista/7

1 - Go to the PD (Puredata) home page and download and install PD-extended version for windows - http://puredata.info/community/projects ... d-extended
2 - Install Midi Yoke, its called midiox on the site - http://www.midiox.com - This is a midi virtual in/out driver and all your music programs will show the midi yoke ports once its installed.
3 - Go here - http://discolingua.com/simple-midi-ableton.pd - right click and save as. It will show in your browser as PD code. That is fine, once saved PD will recognise it and open it properly.
4 - Open it to make sure it works in Pure data. Should see a layout that has the same setup as the simple layout in TouchOSC on your phone.

Connecting android phone to pc using wifi

works with froyo 2.2 (not sure about eclair 2.1). You can try Barnacle from the market if you get issues with ad-hoc networking. Barnacle Never worked for me though. Without Ad-Hoc abilities on your phone you will not be able to go any further as far as I am aware.

1 - on your phone go to settings -> wireless + networks -> tethering and portable hotspots
2 - setup a wifi ad-hoc network under the settings and then turn on portable wifi hotspot
3 - now get your pc to connect to the ad-hoc network using your wifi connection manager.
The ad-hoc network name should be android or similar by default. You may rename and add wpa
4 - you should now see your pc connect.

Loading up PD to work with your phone

1 - Make sure your phone and PC are connected via the ad-hoc network
2 - load up PD
3 - load up TouchOSC on your phone
4 - In PD select your midi out port as midiyoke out 1. Go to the menus in PD and select Media -> Midi to do this. For some reason it will not save this setting in PD so be prepared to do it each time round.
5 - in the music program you are using select the midi port as midiyoke in 1
6 - Now go to your phone and open TouchOSC. Move a control and see if it responds in PD. Do this for several controls just to be sure it all works.
7 - keep PD open and now open your DAW of choice
8 - Load up TouchOSC on your phone and start mapping.

Remember to have PD open first and then open your DAW of choice. I did it the other way to test this and it didn't work.

This is the simple set up for TouchOSC on the Android. If anyone has any other PD patches for the other layouts in TouchOSC for android then please post them up if you want to share.

Hope this was helpful

If you like the app for android phones then please donate to http://www.hexler.net so they develop it further so we can get the functionality of the iphone, ipod version.

Oh Binary please help me dude Im going crazy, All your steps work fine. Using Loopbe1 with Touch Osc and Ableton Live 6. When I go into the Midi settings on Ableton and select Loopbe1 as an input, Ableton still doesnt recognise the touches I make on touchosc even though i can see the movements on PD. What am i doing wrong??

PLEASE HELP!

Sorry to everyone who commented looking for help. I have been busy with my own music and running local electronic nights, so apologies if you got stuck and I didnt reply.

OK so what I suggest you do is make sure you are setting your midi out setttings correclty in PD. Then double check that with abletons. If you have done all that then I am perplexed as to the issue. I think midi yoke is no longer being developed (dont qoute me on that) but you could try finding a copy and using that instead of loopbe1? It is no where near as stable but if it works then top. Other than that I am unsure. I kinda just kept at it trail and error until I got it working.

also will re post the patches soon, since megaupload went down.

[binaryzeromusic]

also should have prob thought of this earlier but if you run a firewall, that can get in the way. Sometimes they are fine but if you are having issues turn that off and see what happens.

Also any XP / Vista users that have this working, could you post up your experiences if possible. That would really help those folks not on win7 currently. Cheers

[binaryzeromusic]

I would also say that I use gingerbread on my phone (cyanogenmod version of android gingerbread) and touch does work on that. However I know that honeycomb has some issues so other than the above I am stumped if your on honeycomb and facing major problems.

[Blackbyrd]

No worries here are the patches I found. They work for me and cover all the inbuilt setups.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=LPEITZL6

could you please repost that on another host? This one is dead(


On another subject, does anyone have, or able to rip LiveControl (http://livecontrol.q3f.org) layout?

Thats what I really need for my Ableton

[binaryzeromusic]

I no longer have those patches and I cant find them online anymore, but I did do a quick search on Google and came across this - http://hexler.net/pure-data-patch-generator

It might only be for windows though and as for LiveControl I am a PC user so I cant help. Sorry.

[sekka]

Hi!

Thanks for the instructions! Had some troubles with connecting bd and touchosc, but combining this http://hexler.net/docs/touchosc-getting-started-osc and your instructions managed to make everything working + communicating via router so no need to turn off internet on laptop and mobile

now trying to modify your template to work with mix16 layer and it appears to be a serious pain in the ass not being familiar with bd. i am sure the time will come for this, but I really don't want it to be today .. I moved x/y pad to screen one and assigned it to proper control outs, that worked smoothly. now adding 5 "bangs" and all messages go to one bang only though looks like i've routed everything properly ..

anyways, I'm trying this archive now http://hexler.net/pure-data-patch-generator and it asks for layout, but I can't find it anywhere on the phone (actually, I can't even find the app itself )

can you please advise? or maybe send me it somehow?
thanks!

[yesandknow]

Anyone has any experience with the new touchOSC for Android and the new bridging software? Does this actually bypass the need to install PD / a virtual MIDI port?

I'm still a little confused; can you use OSC on a PC / touchOSC for Android, and what would its advantage be over regular MIDI?

Thank you!

[noobAudioJunky]

has anyone seen any ios app that can itself be controlled via OSC running on an android tablet (with a much larger, more usable touchscreen) ?

I see studiomux as a kind of bus, but doubt it can do this, and all searches yield zero relevant results...I \don't know if what I'm after is even possible.

[Meffy]

[mod note: Changed color=white to color=black in the original post and quotes of it. The OP was made when KVR's default background for messages was very dark and white text showed up well.]