MIDI in not working out of the box

[HansManders]

Just received my Tulip.
After hooking up in my setup, I wanted to play it using an external MIDI keyboard. Connected the Tulip using a TRS cable to an Arturia Minilab 3 but nothing happens. The onscreen keyboard works fine, nice sounds by the way.

Maybe I got the whole idea wrong and I should look at it from a programmer's point of view (which I am, luckily). More like a Norns Shield. But I always thought it would be usable out-of-the-box.

Any ideas?

[dpwe]

There are, unfortunately, two standards for a DIN5 to 3.5mm minijack for MIDI; Tulip uses "type A", and the Boss-branded cable I got works for me.

Before that, I bought a no-name cable claiming to do MIDI, but it was completely wrong (not even type B, it was apparently intended for audio). So your problem may arise from your cable.

[CelloGit]

Double checked by connecting a PC to the TulipCC via my DIN-to-USB/USB-to-DIN converter, hooking up an USB MIDI keyboard to the PC and connecting the keyboard to the converter via the nice MIDIberry software.
Ran your "def p(m)" routine and got the correct 90 xx yy and 80 vv ww sequences displayed without any delays.
thanks

[bwhitman]

Ok! So you're saying sending midi messages to tulip works via your computer but not directly wired to your controller?

can you try running that diagnostic again on your upgraded tulip so we can see all the messages ? You should no longer see f8s. But I'm curious to see what else is coming in when you play notes.

[bwhitman]

(I did a little googling and found this reddit thread, so maybe there's something "non-standard" about the PSR-410 that we have to learn about! https://www.reddit.com/r/midi/comments/q02djc/yamaha_psr410_midi_issue/ )

[CelloGit]

Results from three setups on the firmware updated TulipCC are in photo below.

yamaha via pc

yahama PSR-410 OUT is connected to PC via two-way smart DIN/USB adapter (called AdX hereafter).

PC is connected to TulipCC IN via AdX + simple DIN-to-TSR connector.

In this setup everything sound fine and smooth on PC soft synth and TulipCC juno (nice!).
Readout is strange though since it has no 80 vv ww sequences.

minilab via pc

Arturia Minilab MIDI keyboard connected to pc via usb.

PC is connected to TulipCC IN via AdX + stupid DIN-to-TSR connector.

In this setup everything sounds fine and smooth on PC soft synth and on TulipCC juno (nice!).
Readout shows both 90 xx yy and 80 vv ww sequences.

yamaha direct

Yamaha OUT is drectly connected to TulipCC IN via simple DIN-to-TRS Type A cable.
We get same behaviour as on TulipCC before the 24/9/24 firmware update.
Readout shows only 90 xx yy sequences, but much worse: as before CPU is stressed since keypresses are only recognized randomly and much delayed. And lots of keypresses are not recognized at all.

[CelloGit]

Eureka, it dawned on me!

The USB keyboard input of the TulipCC also accepts USB MIDI keyboards. Kudos to the designers.
So the issue described above of the Yamaha DIN MIDI keyboard not behaving nicely with the TRS input has become much less urgent.

A drawback of using the USB input is of course that it allows only one USB device connected at the same time. Maybe in the future a hub will be supported. In the meantime I should perhaps build a mechanical switch as alternative to continously swapping cables on the USB input. Or getting up to speed typing on the M5Stack CardKB. But that is a real challenge.

PS. Apologies for the somewhat indecent large size of the screenshot above.

[znmeb]

The ones I get from Amazon are color-coded - bright red for type B and bright blue for type A:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08TM8BT3G/?th=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08WHSP7ZL/?th=1