FootswitchMidi is a Jack Midi client for those cheap foot switches sold by DealExtreme and PCsensor, i.e. it translates switch actions to Midi commands that can be used to control (Jack) Midi applications. FootswitchOSC translates switch actions to OSC messages. The foot switches can be programmed with the Footswitch command line tool.
Right now the program is still in a very early stage, but basic functionality seems to be working.
Some of the known limitations are:
- Not robust with respect to plugging and unplugging
- Only supports models with three switches
- Footswitch needs to be programmed / prepared correctly: Program it with
./footswitch -1 -k '<01>' -2 -k '<02>' -3 -k '<03>' - Midi messages hardcoded for now
- Midi messages not very accurate in time
- Only one OSC destination. Does not support multiple listeners (i.e. applications) via OSC.
- Does not shutdown cleanly (i.e. deregister with libusb and Jack). This does not seem to be a problem in practice.
- With multiple pressed switches, a switch release might give the wrong switch (this is a hardware limitation)
The program requires Jack, libusb-1.0 and liblo, as well as cmake for building. On Ubuntu you can install them with:
$ sudo apt-get install libjack-dev libusb-1.0-0-dev liblo-dev cmake
To download, build, and install FootswitchMidi and FootswitchOSC to the home directory:
$ git clone https://github.com/meznom/footswitchmidi.git
$ cd footswitchmidi
$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=~ ..
$ make install
Run FootswitchMidi or FootswitchOSC:
# Requires that Jack is running
$ footswitchmidi
# Send OSC messages of the form "/footswitch [i:button] [i:on/off]" to
# localhost, port 57120 (this is the default behaviour)
$ footswitchosc --host 127.0.0.1 --port 57120
# Get a useful help message
$ footswitchmidi --help
To quit FootswichMidi or FootswitchOSC, simply press Ctrl-C (send SIGTERM).
The code is distributed under the two-clause BSD license. Have a look at the
LICENSE file for details.
Burkhard Ritter ([email protected]), March 2015