So, while playing around with the Animoog app, if you go into the setup menu there is a selection under ‘Refresh MIDI input(s)’ where  you can select ‘Off’ or ‘Network Session 1′.  This intrigued me!  Apparently you can use MIDI over the ‘Network’.  After some Googling I was still unclear on how to get this setup, so I thought I’d just tell everyone how I did it so you can get to making some cool tunes yourself.

I’m assuming your PC has iTunes installed and you have the Bonjour service that comes with it.  It should work without it but you lose the auto-discovery.  OK, so first thing you’re going to need is the Animoog app on your iPad.  Once that is installed, you’re going to need rtpMIDI which is available for free here.  (Download link on the top right).  I’m using Windows 7 64 bit for reference.  Once you download the rtpMIDI, unzip it and execute the .msi file to install it.  There is a better tutorial for installing rtpMIDI here so I won’t re-iterate everything.  The TL;DR version is Install, click Next, Next, Next, agree to anything that pops up, and done.

After the rtpMIDI is installed, run rtpMIDI from the start menu.  Click the + under ‘My Sessions’ and choose a new name or leave it as default.

Next highlight the (only) session and click the enable box on the right.  Now at this point Bonjour probably hasn’t caught up with you yet to display your iPad in the Directory box like mine.  If it does, click connect.  If it doesn’t click the + under Directory and type in the IP address of your iPad followed by :5004.  eg.  ’192.168.5.104:5004′ which is the case with mine.  You can get the WIFI IP address of your iPad by going to Settings ->General->Network->Wi-Fi->(Your Wi-Fi access point’s name) and you’ll see ‘IP Address’.  It’s usually something like 192.168.1.100 or so.

After adding an item in the Directory, highlight it and click connect.  If successfull it should show up in the ‘Participants window’.  Leave this application running.

OK, still with me?  Good.  Next, run Animoog, click on the top right where it says ‘Settings’, then on the left under ‘Refresh MIDI input(s)’ select ‘Network Session 1′.

At this point I’m going to presume that most software that uses MIDI output on  your PC will work, however I did not try them.  I’m going to use Fruity Loops Studio 9.

Once you fire up Fruity Loops, start with a fresh setup.  Goto Options->MIDI settings.  On the top you should see something similar to my screenshot.  The name of your ‘Session’ you used in rtpMIDI.  Highlight that MIDI Device, click Send Master Sync (so you can control BPM from FLStudio) and set the Port Number to 0.  Close this dialog.

Next, goto Channels->Add one->MIDI out.  On the channel settings, make sure you set the Channel to ’1′ and the Port to ’0′.

At this point you should be able to click the little virtual keyboard and hear it play on your iPad.

If this works, then you are all set up.  If not then either you missed a step or I forgot to mention the step (hah!).

You can start making your patterns with notes and hear them play back on the iPad.  You still have to setup your preset in Animoog on the iPad, and it doesn’t appear that all the functionality is supported.  Some notes don’t appear to work (things like pitch, etc.)  I presume if you had multiple iPads you could set them all up with different presets and make some really killer music.

And here is a quick little YouTube video showing it working.

PicKit2 Debug Express

Around the space, we have been using the PICkit 2 Debug Express quite a bit lately.  This has allowed us to get pretty cozy with the functions of this handy little programmer and I thought I would share some of these features with you.

I’m sure you’ve read the previous tutorial ‘Programming PIC Microcontrollers in C‘, if you haven’t, you should go familiarize yourself with it now.  Continuing on from there, after we have a successful build of a led blinking we can use the PICkit 2 to program our chip via the ICSP header.

Our Debug Express Kit’s came with a Demo Board which has a 44 pin PIC16F887 microchip. The microcontroller is connected to a 6 Pin Male header called the ICSP (In-Circuit Serial Programmer) header.  All PIC microcontrollers with the letter “F” in their name can be programmed this way, even if you are using a breadboard and wires to make the connections. The “F” stands for Flash.  Maybe in a future article we will show you how to construct the ICSP header from the data sheet, but we will just assume you are using the 44 Pin Demo Board for now.

You should already have the PICkit 2 connected to your PC via the USB port, so after a successful build of our program, we can program the chip by selecting the ‘Programmer’ menu from within MPLAB, and then selecting ‘Select Programmer’, then ‘PICkit 2′.

At that point below in the debug window you should see a message such as ‘Found PICkit 2 – Operating System Version 2.32.0 …’ If you do not, select ‘Programmer’ then ‘Connect’ from MPLAB.

Finally we select ‘Programmer’ then ‘Program’, and it should start erasing and programming the chip.

Lastly, one tip that speeds up the programming process is to go to the ‘Programmer’ menu and then click ‘settings’. Then check the boxes ‘Program after a successful build’ and ‘Run after a successful program’.  Once you do that you can just hit F10 to compile and flash the pic over and over as you make small adjustments to your code.

In the end, this simple task is actually quite convenient. Being able to program a chip in-circuit, instead of taking the chip out of the socket, putting it in a programmer, programming it, taking it out, putting it back into the other socket, turning on, etc.

Finally, an often overlooked feature is that the PICkit 2 will power your chip if it doesn’t detect any voltage, which for me personally is the case before I have a power supply set up.  I wouldn’t overdue it, you can power small things, led’s, tiny motors but don’t try to draw too much current from it.  The maximum power draw is 200-300mA less than the USB port puts out, which in most cases is around 500mA leaving you with 200-300mA.  So don’t try to overdue it, if you’ve got a lot of power draw in your circuit, set up your own power source and the PICkit 2 will detect the voltage during program and wont try to power it.

Happy Hacking!

Overview of TortoiseSVN

TortoiseSVN is a shell application. That means it’s an application that it interacts with the operating system. In this case it interacts with the file system. This will become visible in just a few moments. The other thing to know about TortoiseSVN is that you won’t find an icon in your start menu to run some elaborate  GUI (Graphical User Interface). Instead, you will notice a new menu whenever you Right-Click on your Desktop, a File Folder, or a File.  The Windows file system esentially becomes your GUI for working with Files.

The subversion process works by creating a local copy of the existing files. You will be able to distinguish these files from others because they will have additonal icons overlayed on top of your files and folders to show you the status. Once you are finished editing existing files and adding new files you then commit the changes to the remote file server (i.e.  Sourceforge.)

About Those Icons:

A fresh checked out working copy has a green checkmark as overlay. That means the Subversion status is Normal.
As soon as you start editing a file, the status changes to Modified and the icon overlay then changes to a red exclamation mark. That way you can easily see which files were changed since you last updated your working copy and need to be committed.

If during an update a conflict occurs then the icon changes to a yellow exclamation mark.
If you have set the

property on a file, Subversion makes that file ReadOnly until you get a lock on that file. Read-only files have this overlay to indicate that you have to get a lock first before you can edit that file.

If you hold a lock on a file, and the Subversion status is normal, this icon overlay reminds you that you should release the lock if you are not using it to allow others to commit their changes to the file.

This icon shows you that some files or folders inside the current folder have been scheduled to be deleted from version control or a file under version control is missing in a folder.

The plus sign tells you that a file or folder has been scheduled to be added to version control.

Installation

Download the latest  TortoiseSVN installer from http://tortoisesvn.net/downloads. It will have the .msi (Microsoft Installer) file extention. The  TortoiseSVN installer is very straight forward. Just follow the instructions.

Working with Sourceforge

Setting up a Sourceforge account is beyond the scope of this tutorial. We will be looking at this from a supporters or end users perspective. In order to make changes to a projects repository you will need permission from the projects administrator. Sign up for an account and notify the administrator providing them your username.

You will need the URL to the projects repository. This can be found by browsing to the projects homepage and clicking the Develop link on the top menu. Under the subversion access section you will find a URL that looks similar to this: https://hhscnc.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/hhscnc.

Putting it all Together

Now that you have installed TortoiseSVN and you found the URL to the repository you want to work with you’ll need to create a local copy of that repository on your machine.

 1. First, right click on your desktop or in a windows file explorer window where you want the folder to be created. Then click the SVN Checkout button.

 2. Enter the URL obtained earlier from the projects sourceforge page. Then enter the file path where you would like the folder to be created. We used “New Folder” as our example folder. Then click OK.

 3. If you have not already created the folder you will be asked if you would like TortoiseSVN to automatically create it.

 4. Watch as TortoiseSVN downloads the files from the remote server and saves them as a local copy in the folder you named above. Then press OK.

 5. You should now have a new folder on your desktop. You may or may not see the icon overlays on the root folder. If you don’t see an icon like ours don’t worry it’s still working properly and should show up after you work with the local copies and make a few changes to the files and folders.

Now that you have a local copy of the repository you can start making changes to those files. Don’t worry about messing anything up because the changes do not show up in the remote repository unless you commit them and even if you do mess something up the administrator of the project can revert back to a previous copy of the file. You should try to be careful when commiting changes because reverting (rolling back) to a previous version of a file is not always easy.

Here is an example of what your folder structures may look like locally. Note the icons as mentioned earlier. In our case all of our folders and files are unchanged. Under settings you can have TortoiseSVN check for updates automatically. This is setup by default as to check weekly but you may change it.

 Working with Folders and Files

Adding, Deleting, Renaming and Commiting changes to the files and folders is very simple. Just work with the folder as if it were any other folder on your file system. After all it actually is just like every other folder. When you create a new file or folder you need to right click on that file or folder and select Add from the TortoiseSVN menu. This does not actually commit the file to the repository. You will need to right click on the folder and select SVN Commit… from the menu to commit added, renamed, deleted or changed files.

One last thing to note is that there is a Delete option under the TortoiseSVN menu. Insteady of simply pressing Delete when working with your files and folders you may want to use this menu item as it will also delete the remote copy of the file the next time you commit the changes.

Final Thoughts

This tutorial is meant to get you up and running quickly. TortoiseSVN is well documented and you should read about any features not discussed here before using those features. Especially if you don’t own the project you are working on.