Using a MIDI Controller for controlling robot?

[lbassett_21]

Hi everyone!

I was watching some FUN videos and saw team 2714 BBQ use a Launchpad for their operator control. It looks really cool so I decided to jump down this rabbit hole and see how it works.

I have a launchpad mk2 on hand that I would use to control. The problem with a launchpad and any device similar is that it uses MIDI signals that cannot be picked up by the driver station. I did find an awesome program called Launchpad-Controller that was created by @jreneew2 but I personally have no idea where to even start with that as I have no experience with both vjoy and even the simplest things as in running the program lol.

This was just a fun little idea that I saw and I’d love some community help on how to make something like this a reality!

Thanks!

[Peter_Johnson]

An idea for a dashboard plugin or separate application that reads MIDI inputs and sends it via NetworkTables has been bouncing around in my head for a while, but it’s a question of too many projects, not enough time.

It would probably be a pretty fun and relatively easy project to create a NetworkTables Java client that reads MIDI inputs (support for this is integrated into Java) and publishes it to NetworkTables.

[jreneew2]

Hello! Yeah I created that program about a year ago just messing around. It’s not very fully featured and still probably has some reliability issues. I would agree with Peter that it would be easier to write a Java NT client program that interfaces with midi.

I also never really got around to actually finishing the project which was going to allow you to map certain led patterns to the launchpad by sending midi. That would actually be easier using the above method.