midiminder & midiwala

midiminder: an ALSA utility to keep your MIDI devices connected
midiwala: a tool for managing connections

The problem

• Using aconnect to reconnect your devices and your software gets old quick.
• If you power cycle a synth... you've got to aconnect it again.
• Bandmate "helps" by unplugging a USB cord to untangle it and plugs it in again: Now your controller is disconnected.

The solution

midiminder takes care of this:

• It tracks what connections were made between ports, and automatically reestablishes those connections when ports reattach to the system.
• You can specify a profile of things to connect and then tell midiminder to reconfigure your system to that profile in one command.
• The whole desired connection state is persistent, even across system reboots, so that the configuration is quickly restored once devices power back up and applications are restarted.

A bonus

midiwala provides an interactive terminal interface for looking at, and modifying the connections on your system. Try it... you won't regret it!

$ midiwala
┌─ Ports ───────────────────────────────────────
│
│    MicroMonsta 2      : MIDI 1     [ 32:0] <->
│    Midi Through       : Port-0     [ 14:0] <->
│    Midihub MH-1Z109TZ : MIDI 1     [ 36:0] <->
│    Midihub MH-1Z109TZ : MIDI 2     [ 36:1] <->
│    Midihub MH-1Z109TZ : MIDI 3     [ 36:2] <->
│    Midihub MH-1Z109TZ : MIDI 4     [ 36:3] <->
│    Pure Data          : Midi-In 1  [130:0] <--
│    Pure Data          : Midi-Out 1 [130:1] -->

┌─ Connections ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
│
│    Midihub MH-1Z109TZ:MIDI 1 [36:0] --> Pure Data:Midi-In 1 [130:0]
│    Pure Data:Midi-Out 1 [130:1] --> MicroMonsta 2:MIDI 1 [32:0]

  >> Q)uit, C)onnect, D)isconnect, U)ndo

It also includes all the command line functionality of aconnect (list, connect, disconnect), but with very readable output, and improved syntax for specifying ports.

Next Steps

Installing:

1. Go to the Releases page
2. Download the appropriate .deb file for your system
3. Install it with apt:

$ sudo apt install ./midiminder*.deb

User Guide: see USER-GUIDE.md

Building: See BUILDING.md

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Authors

Mark Lentczner - https://github.com/mzero
John Horigan - https://github.com/MtnViewJohn

Thanks

Blokas Labs https://github.com/BlokasLabs
for their work on Patchbox OS, great HW, and pushing us to make this tool even better.

Open source code used

https://github.com/CLIUtils/CLI11 CLI11 2.4.2 Copyright (c) 2017-2024 University of Cincinnati, developed by Henry Schreiner under NSF AWARD 1414736. All rights reserved.