Improvement of AKAI USB EWI - wireless, adding CC messages - using Zero Pi

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Hi to all,

i would like discuss this my project. Maybe it is beyond my power, but i like try it.
Vision is:

  1. create a wireless connection of AKAI USB EWI wind controller to Zynthian.
  2. Adding to Zero Pi a DOF sensor and used it for generation of aditional CC mesages.

Inspiration is from Caractéristiques techniques du Sylphyo – Aodyo Instruments
SYLPHYO has also:

  • Elevation angle: CC 75 (Sound Controller 6)
  • Roll angle: CC 76 (Sound Controller 7)
  • Compass orientation: CC 77 (Sound Controller 8)
    Their new synthesizer Anyma Phi should be able to process these signals, and I somehow didn’t surrender and joined the kickstarter campaign.

But back to first step. what would be the best wireless solution if i have on one side:

and on the other is:

  • Zynthian on Raspberry Pi 4.

If I divide the procedure, I must have to on the raspberry pi zero:

  • start - only mandatory processes, no X, etc.
  • midi connection from AKAI EWI USB, I already mastered this
  • connection to Zynthian, here I do not know which service to use.
  • midi connection between AKAI and Zynthian.
  • signal processing from DOF and conversion to midi signal and adding to midi stream (currently I don’t want to solve, but as a limitation we can accept that I am able to program a little in python)

On the Zynthian side I’m thinking with WIFI HotSpot.

Can you please show me the direction I should take?

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You can use wi-fi (infrastructure or hotspot) to link them but you may find latency jittering due to the mechanism WiFi uses to maintain a link.

You can use a MIDI over network solution like rtpMIDI which Zynthian supports. IIRC it needs enabling in admin menu or webconf.

3

I forgot about bluetooth. When I summarize it and look at the Zythian admin menu I have a choice: RPT-midi
QmidiNet
TouchOSC
It may be better not to bother with a wireless connection and focus on Point 2. Adding a CC midi.

4

If you have the money, a pair of low latency wireless MIDI link devices may be the classy way to go, moving any mapping / signal processing to the Zynthian.

I just ran across a little utility someone made that execute commands based on midi CC values -

I imagine latency is more tolerable with a wind instrument than drums or frenetic keyboarding.

Might use a dongle of sorts on the Zynthian end if you did bluetooth, built in bluetooth path clashes with the DIN MIDI connection.

I would not use a Pi on the instrument end, with it’s linux startup time and vulnerable SD card, though setting it to read only would help.

One of the little Bluetooth 5 boards would be more compact, lower power and robust.

Adafruit ItsyBitsy nRF52840 Express
The $20 Adafruit ItsyBitsy nRF52840 Express works with Arduino or Circuitpython. (Their $30 feather boards have battery management)

Nordic nRF52840 Dongle (PCA10059)
The $10 Nordic Dongle, available from major component houses like Mouser, Digikey, Newark.
It comes loaded with their proprietary bootloader which works with their professional IDE.
You can flash it with the Adafruit bootloader for Arduino, Circuit-python, using a Pi as a programmer. (If I can do it anyone can)

These boards have USB MIDI capabilities. The nRF52840 bluetooth 5 chip has lots of capabilities, X4 the range and X2 the data rate of BT 4, though the Bluetooth MIDI spec. introduces delays.

A Web & Wireless MIDI overview.

Example Bluetooth MIDI board applications:
Glove . . . Receiving End . . . . Wireless Bagpipe 2007 (nRF52 variation is similar)

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