Control your Mac from MIDI devices! The Novation Launchpad (and Launchpad Mini) are supported at the moment, but thanks to Elixir's behaviours, it's easy to add new devices!
Paddington requires a .paddington.yml file in your home folder to work. This file defines a device name, and a list of applications you want to control with paddington. Something like this:
device: Launchpad Mini
applications:
- mpc
- iTerm
- Chrome
- iTunes
The device name has to be among one of the connected MIDI devices, or the app
will fail with an :invalid_device_id error. Launch mix portmidi.devices
from the main folder to discover the available devices.
The applications are Elixir script files (exs) defined in the ~/.paddington folder, and must
follow the naming found in the .paddington.yml file. Check out the paddington-example repo for a quick start.
As an example, this is
my ~/.paddington/mpc.exs:
app "MPC", :line
osx "iTerm2"
command "Activate" do
osascript "activate"
if tmux.current_session == "music" do
tmux.switch
else
tmux.switch "music"
end
end
command "Previous track" do
mpc.previous
end
command "Play/Pause" do
mpc.playpause
if mpc.playing? do
led.green
end
end
command "Next track" do
mpc.next
end
command "Open in browser" do
open "http://localhost:6680/spotmop"
end
As you can see, different helpers are available in the application files. app defines the name of the application, osx sets the app to use in osascript (aka Applescript), and every command block defines what series of commands to fire when a MIDI note is received from the external device.
The commands are collected as the interpreter goes through the file(s). In the case of this configuration, that means that if your device has a grid (like a Launchpad), the pad in the upper left corner will focus on iTerm2 and switch to the tmux session named music (or switch back to the previous session, if already on music).
You can find all the available helpers in the helpers folder (they are not that many at the moment, bear with me!).
At the moment, the installation is pretty rudimentary:
$ git clone https://github.com/lucidstack/paddington.git
$ cd paddington
$ make
$ make install
...
$ paddington
Any contribution is welcome! If you have a device you'd like to implement (or see implemented), take a look at the Launchpad transducer and feel free to ping me for help here, on twitter, or on the Elixir Slack organisation (lucidstack).
As usual, the process is pretty simple: fork, write tests, write code, tests pass, submit a PR! I'll try to get back as soon as possible.
See LICENSE