Controlling LiVES with a Wii-mote



LiVES user Aurelien sent a patch which allows a Wii-Mote to act like a MIDI device. With this patch it is possible to control LiVES using a Wii-Mote via the LiVES MIDI interface.

The Wiidi code can be downloaded from http://lives-video.com/extras/wiidi-0.0.2.tar.gz

Once the patch is set up, you can start up LiVES in Clip Edit mode. Then go to VJ -> MIDI/Joystick learner. You should be able to connect the Wii-Mote output to various commands in LiVES. You can also save your device mapping for later reloading.

Salsaman - April 15, 2010.



The following is an email from Aurelien. Any bugs/comments about this code should be forwarded to tyranorl - at - free.fr .

OK, here it is: Wiidi-0.0.2 So, build is done with scons. There is no install by that time, just build, and it works. Some dependencies have to be met, especially libasound and libcwiid.

By the way, you may take a look at what Florent did (audio softwares): http://tardigrade-inc.com/

So, once built, how does it work? Easy: first press 1+2 buttons, so that the Wii-mote will be detected.

Then, there are 16 patches, which can be changed by sending a program change to Wiidi. Patch number appears on the Wii-mote through the LEDs (just take it as bits, from left to right, you will get 0->15 patches). Each patch can assign every button and accelerators of the wii-mote and nunchuk to send different MIDI events.

The MIDI events for each patch is being set in the (by the moment static) file "test.txt", in the wiidi-0.0.2 folder. It uses MIDI standard notation (144 for a note, 176 for a CC, 192 for a program change, and so on). In this file, you also mention whether you want to use accelerator or not (by patch) and nunchuk or not (by patch), and IR or not (by patch). Though, actually, IR doesn't work, as I didn't need it, and hadn't anything to point on to try it!

And, that's it, actually.

The source code is very simple, and it's not hard to add some features, like more MIDI output ports, so that you can route MIDI events following several routes, or even use command-line to set-up the bindings file, and some other things I hadn't time to develop.

Hope it helps. By the way, I already use it onstage.

PS: be careful, when shutting Wiidi down, something weird sometimes happens: wii-mote works like a keyboard. As the accelerators send messages every piece of time, it just takes the whole processor, and I never get out of it without hard reboot. A way to avoid this is to shut the wii-mote down before Wiidi (by pushing out batteries, for example).



Have a good time. Aurélien