Superbooth 21

General discussion
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Testing the setup for the Superbooth…

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If you are interested, please find us at the booth 0260. There will be Electras to play around, Yamaha TX7, Roland MKS50, NordRack 2X connected to Electra with iConnectivity MioXL to see the bi-directional communication. Ableton, Logic Pro, Bitwig with a few MIDI controllers… We will be happy to discuss anything and we will share important news on the latests developments!

And I am happy to announce that @thetechnobear will be there with us, presenting his Electrified Orac :slight_smile:

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Electra-fied!!!

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See you Friday /Saturday! :blush:

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Damn - too far away to attend :smiley:. all the best for a great show!

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Good luck @martin
James

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Yea, I’ll be there at Saturday first shift, 10.00h till 14.00h.
Looking forward to it. :smiley:

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Excited to be there sharing some exciting developments!

It’s a shame not everyone can attend, but keep an eye on social media for a taste of Superbooth … I’m sure Electra One news will be featured :slight_smile:

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Looking forward to hearing the annoucements. Sadly can’t attend this year. Have a great time and hope the event goes well for you

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Feel free to please post some updates here, for those of us not able to attend as well as those (like me) who tend to steer clear of social media. Haven’t been to Berlin in quite some time, one of my favorite Euro Cities!

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I’m on the other side of the world and I hope it goes well for you. Would love to buy one when they become available.

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We are back from the Superbooth. Even though it was not as crowded as it usually is, we were rather busy with talking to the visitors and other exhibitors.

A big thanks to everybody who came by. big thanks to @thetechnobear for joining us and presenting his Electra that runs a special firmware for Orac. This brings me to the most important news of the Superbooth (well, regarding Electra, not the whole fair…).

Electra firmware is going to be opensource. That means that other software developers will be able to develop their own custom firmwares and applications for Electra. They are also welcomed to join me and help with the improving the existing MIDI controller firmware.

We have spent whole summer on splitting the existing firmware into two parts:

  • the base firmware with JUCE-like programming API (C++). The base firmware provides functionality to work with MIDI on all interfaces, touch screen, touch knobs, buttons, internal storage, graphics and on-screen components.
  • the MIDI controller app (which you all are using) is built on top of the base firmware.

@thetechnobear already used the base firmware to develop his own Orac application. Other possible examples of Electra apps are sequencers, deep integrations with DAWs, and any type of MIDI generation or processing apps. The source code will be made available on the Github some time this or early next week.

Thanks also go to @joris.roling, @rhawtin, and @andersskibsted for their work on the Bitwig integration. We discussed the ideas at the SB. I must say I am very excited about what is happening in that area.

The last but not least bit of info. The missing parts are already on the way (shipping confirmed). We are planning to open the order page around end of the September. People on the waiting list will be contacted up front.

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Happy Electra One team (@Tomas is not there as he came later :slight_smile: )

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Thanks @martin
(sorry to have missed you before I left, I left happy/excited but frankly exhausted! :slight_smile: )

It was a great opportunity to meet the whole Electra One team, and get some quality time together, sharing ideas and experiences.

Congratulations on open sourcing the firmware.
It’s a huge and exciting step forward, opening up so many possibilities, and to also share experiences and contribute to the platform as a whole.

for those not at the show…

The Orac firmware shows slightly in approach to using that hardware (than the midi controller firmware)
Since Orac is a (kind of) virtual modular, the UI has to be very dynamic, as the user is able to switch in and out modules.
so, rather than laying out the UI, Orac dynamically changes the E1 UI depending upon what modules are loaded , so there is nothing to ‘configure’.

In many ways its similar to how the Push 2 works with Ableton Live, where the Push 2 reflects Lives state, and of course works bi-directionally.

technically this is done by exchange a data model between the E1 and Orac, using its own sysex protocol. this is all done dynamically, so you can even unplug the E1 talking to Orac on one device (say an organelle) , and plug it into another (say Orac on a terminal tedium) .
so you can share one E1 between devices.

the same E1 firmware will work with Orac running on any platform be it, an Organelle, rPI, Terminal Tedium ( even a Mac which I use for development purposes only)

whens it being released?
well its done, though I probably want to update it for the latest E1 firmware changes
I will then release this E1 firmware, and also MEC (which is the ‘bridge’),
I’ll likely also release a minor update to Orac , since I fixed a few other (unrelated) things.

this, of course, is all free, and is also open source - so E1 firmware developers will have another ‘example’ app to get ideas from.

anyway congrats to the Electra One team, its a great step forward,

also it was great to see so much interest in the E1 at the Superbooth stand!

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Orac on the stand …

a celebration of open source !

  • E1 open source firmware
  • Orac open source
  • Terminal Tedium, open source hardware
  • Organelle M, open source software
  • Mutable Instruments modules in Orac - you guessed it open source !
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A huge congratulations for a successful show! Very excited for the open source announcement and can’t wait to get back to some quality E1 coding time!

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This is very exciting! Thank you so much for open sourcing the firmware, great adventures lie ahead.

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This is really exciting news! Cheers to you for opening up the Electra even further - looking forward to seeing what kind of mad-professor projects this will enable.

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Hey @martin. It’s been awhile. I hope all is well on your end. I recently got a Mio XL and when I try to connect the E1 via USB to the XL it constantly turns on and off and never fully boots up. Is there something I can do to get it to boot up via USB connected to the XL?

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Hi @jigdagod, great to hear from you! You have one of the older hardware revisions, these required more power than mioXL can provide on a single USB port. Use a powered USB hub or dual USB cable that can provide extra power to your Electra.

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Got it! Thanks, I’ll give that a try. I appreciate it.