Hardware and software and software interface for control by midi messages

Abstract

The invention, operating on the MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) standard, aims at providing a personal computer user (12) an external peripheral (8) in the form of a table of switching and potentiometric controllers and its managing software (9), the whole set providing real time control of parameters used by controllable client software's (1) or external hardware systems (14) capable of operating the MIDI standard. The invention should be considered as a complementary extension of conventional man-machine interfaces which consist in the keyboard and mouse to the extent that it enables to control parameters from rotary potentiometers, linear potentiometers and switches. The invention comprises two parts, hardware and software. The hardware (8) is a console of controllers whereof the electronic production is very simple, hence inexpensive. The software (9), resident in storage after launching, scans the values of the console of controllers via a connection port (13) of the computer. Said values, whether after being transformed or not, are provided to the client software's in real time by sending messages observing the MIDI standard to a software (10) or hardware (11) MIDI peripheral. The client applications (1) of the invention can be software's of different fields of application (computer-assisted music, computer graphics, and the like) or software's controlling external hardware systems (14) if they authorise it. The invention converts the values derived from the console in the form of MIDI messages. Thus, the software's compatible with said standard can be controlled by the table. Furthermore, the MIDI data can be directly routed to a hardware MIDI peripheral (11) (of the board for instance) to control likewise hardware MIDI machines (15) such as synthesizer, beatbox, sound effects and the like.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.