Direktor
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Greenland

Good evening, ladies and gentleman.
I would like to inquire wether anyone can direct me to a tutorial about how to use an arduinoboy with LSDj. Nothing I try seems to work and I feel increasingly stupid, and apparently every arduinoboy tutorial is about building one or using it with mGB (does not work either...).

Your help will be greatly appreciated.

EDIT: What I want to do is changing between LSDj projects while staying in sync with ableton, where I play recorded chains. There should not be pauses between songs, since I do dance music; basically what you would expect from a discjockey.
Right now, LSDj is in sync (with sync mode "MIDI") until I stop the playback in LSDj or load a new LSDj project. When I start playback in LSDj anew, it just starts playback at the exact point I press start. However, it does definitely receive information from my daw: When I change the tempo in ableton while LSDj is actually synced, the tempo in LSDj changes as well.
Also, I already tried all modes on the arduinoboy. In all other modes, LSDj's playback does not start when I press play in ableton.
I already made a thread with my particular problem, but I did not get any answers that were much use before it was buried in newer topics.

EDIT2: Does LSDj behave differently when you sync two Game Boys via link cable? Is the sync broken when you stop playback as well? If it did not, I would consider getting a second LSDj cartridge instead of using an arduinoboy.

Last edited by Direktor (Apr 5, 2013 1:25 pm)

katsumbhong
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Taichung, Taiwan

I would search "How to use MIDI input device."

That is how it is designed to work.

I've always wanted to go to Greenland.

Direktor
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Greenland
katsumbhong wrote:

I would search "How to use MIDI input device."

That is how it is designed to work.

I've always wanted to go to Greenland.

I tried it, but I did not reap any useful results. Thank you for your input, though.

Greenland is great. The weather is just lovely during this time of the year.

katsumbhong
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Taichung, Taiwan

Kind of a stupid question, but do you know if your arduinoboy was built properly? If you were using it as Midi-input and it wasn't working, could it be a faulty build project? Where did you get your arduinoboy?

Direktor
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Greenland
katsumbhong wrote:

Kind of a stupid question, but do you know if your arduinoboy was built properly? If you were using it as Midi-input and it wasn't working, could it be a faulty build project? Where did you get your arduinoboy?

That's not a stupid question at all. It was built by Ryux (this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0jVvTC_ … ;index=9). The LEDs blink and when I put LSDj in MIDI mode, it does wait until I hit start in ableton live and then starts playing, more or less in sync. But it stops being in sync when I stop LSDj's playback and/or load another LSDj project. I do not have another arduinoboy to test if it behaves like mine, though.

katsumbhong
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Taichung, Taiwan

Maybe you can get a hold of the originator of the arduinoboy on this forum... trash80.

Last edited by katsumbhong (Apr 4, 2013 10:01 pm)

Direktor
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Greenland
katsumbhong wrote:

Maybe you can get a hold of the originator of the arduinoboy on this forum... trash80.

That might be a good last resort option. At first I will message the guy who built my arduinoboy, though - if it is faulty, he probably knows best what it SHOULD do.

ashimoke
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Czech republic

I'm not really sure but I think LSDJ needs the midi start message to start playback. Which is not the case whan you have constant midi clock stream while loading new song.

edit: 2 of my friends and my brother are going to greenland this year (each on their own) and I'm soooooo envious! Hope to make this trip myself soon.

Last edited by ashimoke (Apr 5, 2013 9:57 am)

Direktor
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Greenland
ashimoke wrote:

I'm not really sure but I think LSDJ needs the midi start message to start playback. Which is not the case whan you have constant midi clock stream while loading new song.

I do not follow. Would you care to clarify? Do you mean that LSDj does not need the start message (e.g. from ableton) to start playback when a new song is loaded, if the previous song already received the start message? That is not my experience.

ashimoke wrote:

edit: 2 of my friends and my brother are going to greenland this year (each on their own) and I'm soooooo envious! Hope to make this trip myself soon.

I wish your friends the best of luck. I, too, hope that you manage to make the trip yourself at some point. There could hardly be any finer destination than the not-so-green-island.

jrasor
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new jersey

You'll have a much easier time troubleshooting with mGB. LSDJ has to be setup very specifically for being midi controlled.

I can't tell from the video but if you're supplying the cable that goes between the arduinoboy and the Gameboy, you need to make sure that all the pins are connected. Most link cables have some of the pins not connected or missing altogether.

In mGB mode, there should be an LED that is triggered whenever you hit a key on your midi controller. If that isn't happening, double check that you're in the right mode.

Set your midi controller to midi channel 1. The four voices in mGB are channels 1-4 so if you're outside of that group, it probably won't do anything.

Direktor
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Greenland
jrasor wrote:

You'll have a much easier time troubleshooting with mGB. LSDJ has to be setup very specifically for being midi controlled.

I can't tell from the video but if you're supplying the cable that goes between the arduinoboy and the Gameboy, you need to make sure that all the pins are connected. Most link cables have some of the pins not connected or missing altogether.

In mGB mode, there should be an LED that is triggered whenever you hit a key on your midi controller. If that isn't happening, double check that you're in the right mode.

Set your midi controller to midi channel 1. The four voices in mGB are channels 1-4 so if you're outside of that group, it probably won't do anything.

Thank you for your input! I will keep the information about mGB for future reference; it does not do what I want right now, though, which is performing my LSDj songs. I did not know the thing about link cable pins; it seems there are no pins missing at least.
Could you maybe describe in more detail how to setup LSDj for this purpose, so I can determine wether it is actually a hardware problem?

Last edited by Direktor (Apr 5, 2013 12:54 pm)

ashimoke
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Czech republic

You should describe your problem in more detail.

Also - you set the sync mode for each song separately. Make sure you've got the right mode when you load the new one.

Direktor
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Greenland
ashimoke wrote:

You should describe your problem in more detail.

Also - you set the sync mode for each song separately. Make sure you've got the right mode when you load the new one.

I just inserted an edit at the end of my first post, which describes my particular problem in detail.

I just tried loading a new song where the right sync mode was already selected before loading it. But the real problem is that once I stop playback in LSDj, it stops being synchronized. My only option would be to stop and restart playback in ableton as well, but for me that is no option in a live show.

herr_prof
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In LSDJ Midi slave mode you can have abelton send a note when you want to start a sequence started:

LSDJ Slave Mode Midi Note Effects:

    48 - C-2 Sends a Sequencer Start Command
    49 - C#2 Sends a Sequencer Stop Command

You will have to manually select the row to be played, so thats why I suggested syncnamp

SYNCMAP - Lsdj will sync to incoming MIDI sync, and notes immediately change the song row #.

Direktor
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Greenland
herr_prof wrote:

In LSDJ Midi slave mode you can have abelton send a note when you want to start a sequence started:

LSDJ Slave Mode Midi Note Effects:

    48 - C-2 Sends a Sequencer Start Command
    49 - C#2 Sends a Sequencer Stop Command

You will have to manually select the row to be played, so thats why I suggested syncnamp

SYNCMAP - Lsdj will sync to incoming MIDI sync, and notes immediately change the song row #.

Thanks you! But how exactly do I set that up (for the LSDj MIDI slave mode part)? LSDj sync to "MIDI"-mode, put the cursor into the row desired to start, connect it via arduinoboy to my soundcard's MIDI-out, and then produce a C2 MIDI note which is sent to the MIDI out via some channel (I tried channel 1 just now)? what does 48 and 49 mean?
Or do I send the note from LSDj to ableton?

For reference: I never snyced anything else to ableton but a Game Boy, so I am a noob about midi functions of daw as well. I only barely got my MIDI keyboard to send notes to synthesizer plugins in ableton.

Last edited by Direktor (Apr 5, 2013 2:45 pm)

herr_prof
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read the aboy page, you can use the max patch editor to set your incoming midi control channel. Then you get the special version of the lsdj rom (from the offical download page) and set it to syncmap sync mode, and set the arduinoboy to sync map mode and then have abelton send the midi commands above.