okay well - i guess a little status update. I’m stuck at home for a minute so I still have some more playing to do with the bomebox but I figured i could share what i had so far.
The bomebox itself is pretty nice - i wish it wasn’t a plastic chassis and i wish it was a little smaller (for things like the ethernet are just, there).
Anyways - what you’re all waiting for is to hear about the midhub bomebox interaction. It really wants to work for me but just doesn’t. When I plug the midihub into the bomebox I see 4 inputs and 4 outputs as one would expect. The problem was that every so often (usually under a minute), the midihub would like error out when connected to the bomebox and lose its connection. Like all the lights on the midihub would light up and go solid, then after a little bit midihub looks like it resets itself and the process starts all over. So while I started to play with midi hib and got basic routing to work, this issue is a deal breaker.
Now it could be electrical - since this is like a daisy chain of usb power. I have a powered overbridge → bomebox → midihub – so maybe there’s just not enough power for it to sorta work but not work well. Alternatively, maybe there’s something between bomebox and midihub that’s just not quite working. Anyways - I’m not sure I have ton of energy to debug this with blokas given i’m already a little burned on midihub as it is (Program Change Clusters with values 1 or 124 and duplicate all note off messages with value 0 or 123 - #9 by Giedrius - Support - Blokas Community)
Hopefully i’ll get back to the studio in a couple hours and get my program to work. I wrote my program, it was really easy - i just haven’t had a chance to see if it works (i got caught up on the midihub thing). If it’s as easy as it appears to be, yea - the bomebox is dramatically easier to program than midihub - at least for ‘turn this midi thing into this other midi thing’ - but i guess i should save that for when i actually get things working.
There are two bomeboxisms that i’m not sure about though - maybe you folks have guidance?
- Do you use the bomebox in hotspot mode? I’m inclined to throw it on my wifi as a client - but it’s not clear to me how this would affect useability. My desktop is on a wired connection so connecting to the bomebox wirelessly isn’t an issue - but just something i was curious about.
2.) There’s like a logical disconnect as to what midi ports the programming software uses versus what’s on the bomebox. To me it seems like the way to program it is to connect your usb midi to the computer so you can see the port in the programming software - then do the program. But it says I should be able to use ‘aliases’ to do things (USB 1, USB 2 etc) - i just don’t really get how to use them. I’ll probably go watch a video before too long, but i just wondered what the workflow here.
anyways - looking forward to getting back to it. unfortunately that I can’t get the midi hub to work - maybe other people can. It’s a tank, very solid build - but i keep seeming to have weird little issues with mine. I’ll probably pick up a 2 or 4 port hardware midi box on amazon and give that a go once i verify my program works.