padKontrol software for OS X that sets up light switches

[flycycle]

I bought a padKontrol a couple of months back for the sole purpose of using it to switch on effects in Ableton, and having the lights let me know which effects were on - very useful for beat mangling!

Korg made the strange decision to have the lights for toggle mode pads switched to 'on' all the time, so after finding the padKontrol sysex information on this forum and reading about active mode, I figured I could sort out a program that would make the thing behave how I wanted it to.

So, here's what I've done so far - FarmPad takes over the padKontrol and turns every pad and switch on it in to a toggle. The toggle has it's light off when switched off, and the light comes on when it's switched on.

The other controls still work, and I've made the rotary encoder in to a MIDI control too.

This works for turning loops on and off in Ableton too - set the loop's trigger mode to 'gate' then assign a toggle to it.

It's gig-tested, but only on a Macbook Pro, 10.4.9 - please let me know if you get it working on your machine, and also if you have any problems.

I'm going to get round to doing a Windows version, but I'd like to get the planned features sorted out before I start doing the cross-platform stuff.

Hope you find it useful!

Get it here -> http://farmaudio.com/farmpad

[Daz]

Cunning

It's not something I need, but I know others will get a big kick out of it ... so thanks !

[parris]

Fantastic can't wait for the pc version ........................Keep up the good work..............

[rastko]

Dear flycycle ,

this sounds great ! thank you so much and I hope you shall develop the thing even more or help Korg to do the same.

but..

the link is dead

yours

rastko

[Daz]

This link to the disk image works : http://farmaudio.com/farmpad/FarmPad_v0.1.dmg

It's that old chestnut that webservers are often case sensitive

[flycycle]

Oops - fixed the link now...

Thanks for the kind words, and I'm definitely going to keep working on it. The main things I want to add at the moment are different pad trigger types, and the option to load scene configurations - really the stuff that's missing from a regular padKontrol. Hopefully I'll have an update up sometime next week.

[garf]

thanks fly, this is tiptop!

[lowfatradio]

Sorry for the dumb question but I'm a mac user that never touches terminal (bad I know). So I have no idea how to "run" something. Any help would be appreciated

[flycycle]

Hi low,

Looks like I made a mistake with the installer which can't have helped you in trying to get this to work! I've fixed it now so please download the disk image again and open 'Install FarmPad' once you've got it.

After you've the installer's finished you can run the program by opening Terminal, (found under Utilities in your Applications folder), then when the terminal window opens (you should see some text saying 'Welcome to Darwin!' along with some other stuff), type 'farmpad' then press enter.

If you've already tried this and it didn't work, it's probably because I screwed up the installer - sorry!

[lowfatradio]

Thanks so much!! That did the trick. and Please no worries. I'm just ecstatic that you've written this. I can't wait till it supports scenes. What is your development timeline? Seriously, thanks so much for your hard work!!

Low

[flycycle]

Great, glad it's working - out of interest, which mac and os x version are you using?

Scenes are really the last thing on the to do list - I'm hoping to have it all done within a month or so. After that I can get the Windows version sorted out.

The work involved is no bother at all, I enjoy messing about with tech so it's been fun.

[lowfatradio]

Powerbook
2.16ghz intel core duo
OSX 10.4.9

Sounds like the same you but I hope this helps.

Low

[isnie]

any chance for a pc version?

[EDIT]
woops nevermind didn't read the thread correctly.
hope everything will work out.

[autogenesis]

I'm having problems getting this to work on my Powerbook G4 PPC, OSX 10.4.9. When I run the command in terminal, I get this message

Code: Select all

-bash: /usr/bin/farmpad: cannot execute binary file

No lights flashing on the PK, and no changes in the pads illumination. I hope this will be fixed so I can take full advantage of the Controller in my set.

Nice work on this though, I'm sure it will be invaluable to a lot of people.

[zid]

Dear flycycle,

I've try to use your great idea but no way to make it run (MBP C2D, 10.4.9)

......"MacBookPro:~ xxx$ /Users/zid/Desktop/korg/farmpad/FarmPad; exit
Failed to connect to a padKontrol device"

did I missed something?

anyway, keep up he good work and thanks!