Looking at the
MIDI plugin documentation I've noticed that the DMX over MIDI implementation goes through great length to map 512 channels of DMX to MIDI using many different MIDI messages. One thing I do wonder, though, is why SysEx messages aren't used to solve this in a really simple manner? SysEx messages can be arbitrary, but they are still limited 0-127 value range, which can be worked-around in a following manner:
- F0
<some QLC specific header>
Channel/MSB (upper 7 bits)
Channel/LSB (lower 7 bits)
Value/MSB (upper 7 bits)
Value/LSB (lower 7 bits)
F7
If something like this looks reasonable, I would be more than happy to help with implementing it in QLC+. It would still use the same MIDI driver already written, just with different parsing, so my (maybe naive) guess is that it wouldn't be too much work. I think something like this could open up DMX control to a lot more users since my USB MIDI device is a
popular open-source project, and having DMX on top of configurable MIDI device would be desirable for some people. This could also enable the usage of the device both as an controller of QLC interface (MIDI from device to QLC) and as DMX controller (DMX data in form of SysEx messages to device). Also due to the generic nature of the proposal, this of course wouldn't be limited to my device only, but to every device supporting the proposed feature (either via SysEx discovery or VID/PID combination).
