Flosc 2, and new OSC AS3 Classes

There’s a new version of Flosc and the OSC AS3 classes courtesy of Nacho. yes i know, i’m well behind the times, but i’ve had a few other projects on that didn’t really apply to this blog.

Go and grab all the new bits and pieces over at code.google.com/p/flosc/

I had a little trouble with the new flosc java server on snow leopard, in that the gui didn’t display properly (i think you’re meant to be able to specify the port numbers via the interface), but apart from that everything seems cool. the AS3 classes are certainly more streamlined than my bodged together versions.

good work Nacho!

Oscar

I just came across Oscar, via Momo the Monster’s excellent blog.

While it currently only supports OSC > Flash, two directional communication is on the to-do list. When this is sorted i think it could look like a serious contender to flosc.

Whilst I’m happy with flosc, it’s simple syntax and good performance, it always gives me a little more peace of mind working with projects that are being updated more regularly (although saying that, I have just noticed flosc has a new website, though the examples that come with it are still in AS1).

I will be keeping an eye on Oscar to see how the project progresses.

Getting FLOsc Up and Running…

I had a few problems get FLOsc running in Windows XP, due to some problems with java classpaths or something. What Sun had to say didn’t work for me, but thanks anyway. I ended up having to set it manually every time, which isn’t such a hassle as you can write a .bat file to launch FLOsc.

Your .bat file wants to look something like this…

set classpath=c:\program~1\flosc\;.;
cd\progra~1\flosc\

java Gateway 10000 57117

with your classpath being wherever you keep flosc, but don’t miss the extra .; . 57117 is the default port that Occam uses, and you can send OSC messages to Flash on port 10000. Obviously you can use whichever ports you like.

In OS X, I didn’t have any such troubles. Just write a script very similar to the one above minus the classpath line, save it as flosc.command (for example). Then open terminal, type cd followed by the  file path, followed by

chmod 755 flosc.command

to make it executable. Now you can just double click it to run FLOsc.
On to the fun stuff…

FLOsc AS3 Classes

So Adam over at DustyPixels.com, author of the Fwiidom FLOsc AS3 classes, has very kindly said  I can do what I like with them.

You can get my modified version of his classes here (Update: download here) (Update: Finally found a more permanent home)

I really didn’t do much to them, except Occam seems to expect an integer instead of a string at some point, so I poked around in the function that builds the XML packets to send to FLOsc and changed an ‘s’ to an ‘i’. I also added a little debug feature as I got a little bored with my output panel being flooded with text, and made the output traces a little more readable. I’ll talk about how to use this in the coming tutorial.

Thanks Adam…
Thadam.

Using Flash for MIDI

I’ve spent a long time trying to get Flash to speak MIDI effectively. It started quite a while ago with Alexis Isaac’s (now pretty much defunct) FlashMidi, which seemed to work fine at the time but is Windows only and firmly stuck in AS2.

 

…and AS2

 

Then I moved on to Red5, and many nights bombarding John Grden’s message boards. Whilst Red5 at first seemed great – it was certainly much more responsive than FlashMidi, and cross platform – I soon got stuck trying to send MIDI CC data. Sending notes was fine, which is great for things like triggering samples or turning effects on and off, but without Continuos Controller data there was no filter sweeps or volume changes. I’m not saying you can’t send MIDI CC data with Red5 – and I don’t see any reason you wouldn’t be able to – I just never found out how to do it. Oh yeah, and it’s biiig! Red5 Server came to around 55MB last time I checked. Then, it does do much more than just MIDI

 

Built using Red5

 

 

Next I moved on to FLOsc, which I had been aware of the whole time but never took into consideration. Whilst FLOsc sends OSC messages as opposed to MIDI, there are applications out there to convert between the two.

Most of what I have found regarding FLOsc has been using Flash to talk with MAKE boards. This turtorial over at phy5ics.com got me started. He was using the FWiidom FLOsc AS3 Classes, which were obviously used for Flash and a Nintendo Wiimote. I only had to make a small change to the classes to get it to work properly with Occam, and we have Flash speaking MIDI!

I’ll post the classes (as long as the relevant people say it’s ok), and all my source code for anything related to the above as soon as possible.

UPDATE : Thanks to Adam at DustyPixels.com I’ve posted my updated versions of his AS3 classes. You can get them here.

Occam

 

Minimal MIDI > OSC

I had read about a utility for OS X called Occam, which converts OSC messages to MIDI, but I had a hard time tracking it down as all the links I could find were dead.

You can download it at Chandrasekhar Ramakrishnan’s new site, www.illposed.com

It’s very minimal and very easy to use, and worked better for my application than OSCulator.

Touchscreen

Here is a quick preview of  my new touchscreen, which just arrived in the post. I believe it came from a video jukebox.

The software running on the touchscreen is written entirely in AS3, connecting to FLOsc to send OSC data over a network to Occam, which converts OSC to MIDI to control Ableton Live.

I will be posting in more detail about each of these in the near future, just as soon as I get bored with doing filter sweeps on the touchscreen…