MIDI to Neewer Lights

[Lord Tim]

Hey forum people, can I pick your brains for a bit?

So I grabbed a couple of sets of Neewer 660 RGB LED lights - great value for what you get and will come in handy for my "other" day job as a videographer. Cheap 'n' cheerful, but also comes with a handy app control too, but sadly (and not unexpectedly considering the price) no DMX or anything like that.

But that got me thinking, if there's app control using Bluetooth, couldn't there also be some kind of app or script that you could run from a PC that would control it? Apparently I'm not the only person who thought along these lines and I came across this Python script.

OK, cool. So my next bit of thinking was, how do I get a DAW to send MIDI commands to this script (eg: CC messages to control brightness or hue, note on/off to control lights on/off, etc)?

Apparently this script can also run a local web daemon that exposes a web page to control the lights too, and that made me think of Web MIDI.

Does anyone have any thoughts about how to expose a MIDI input inside Cakewalk, that could either send data to the web daemon, or directly to the Python script? Perhaps something like LoopBe to create the MIDI I/O and then something to intercept the messages from that?

I mean, ideally this would all be in a VSTi I could drop into CbB onto a track and control it directly, but for the moment I'm just kicking some tyres to see if anyone has any good suggestions (I mean besides going out and buying some proper lights with DMX ?)

Edited April 6, 2023 by Lord Tim

[User 905133]

Edited April 7, 2023 by User 905133
to withdraw my post

[JnTuneTech]

Wow, @Lord Tim - be careful, or you are going to become a programmer! Dont - don't do it!! ?

Seriously though, I know your quest. Trying to program lights with MIDI.  -Seems like most things that are lightweight & affordable nowadays are just using some proprietary app, even DMX is going to change soon too, so many vendors already have their own control protocols & respective apps.

I guess, after looking at the script you linked, I see maybe the actual Neewer interfacing may be open to programmers, and thus the script. The hard part for you, is finding the MIDI link. or someone to write a VST version of the GUI app (good luck).

Apparently the python script already has the Bluetooth connectivity part. -If the GUI created in that python script also had MIDI control linked in, you would be golden. In my lighting adventures, I seem to have mostly been guided to use an outside link (as you mention - LoopBe or LoopMIDI, etc.), to then have Cakewalk talk to the app, also running on your system. -There is also OSC control, but I am not so familiar with that yet.  -Either way, you might want to query the script programmer, to see if there are any plans or options to add interface MIDI control to the GUI app? I know some good lighting apps use python, so it's likely the code is out there. Not sure what else to suggest.

[Lord Tim]

Yeah, all of the Bluetooth is covered by the Bleak library that the main script imports. If I had more free time I'd investigate the same for MIDI but time, unfortunately, is not on my side.  My programming skills are pretty rough these days so I'd expect more wailing and gnashing of teeth rather than working code ?

OSC is a good angle though, I might dig into that a bit on my next breather

[msmcleod]

My first thought was an arduino, but actually a raspberry pi would be much easier to work with.

Assuming you can get hold of one, the Pi Zero is only £5 and is more than powerful enough.  If you absolutely need bluetooth, the Pi Zero W is only £15. They'll both accept MIDI USB "cables" with an appropriate micro USB adapter,  and it'll run python with the standard OS image.

It should just be a matter of writing a script to listen for certain MIDI messages, then calling the appropriate commands within the NeewerLite API.  There are plenty of examples of processing MIDI within Python on the internet.

[Luisinuay]

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