Traktor track name / time to LCD via MIDI! ...using Denon LCD support & Arduino

[thatdjdjkid]

Midi track string

So how easy would it be to port the string information coming out of the denon driver into osc to send track titles to touchosc or lemur? because that would be awesome.

[MiL0]

bump - anyone made any more progress with this?

[Siytek]

@MiL0

bump - anyone made any more progress with this?

I have been meaning to come out of hibernation! lol I have been very busy with my new career as a PCB frontend engineer so not had as much time to work on music tech stuff as I have been used to in the past.

I have put Arduino to one side temporarily, I have been developing with PIC and C more recently and now have a working USB MIDI core design. After manufacturing my first Arduino design (01M) I decided that I just couldn’t move forward without being able to add USB to my designs. I have not abandoned Arduino, I have just developed a way to add full speed USB MIDI to any of my projects The chip I have been working with is a PIC8F4550 (same as the one on the CUI board). Although I could now theoretically add USB MIDI to Arduino with my recent project, im not sure if it is ‘ethically’ right to use AVR and PIC in one design!!

So with regards to the Denon LCD MIDI project, I would hope that utilising full speed USB MIDI (no UART emulation / FTDI chip) could iron out some of the issues we were having.

Im currently working some really exciting projects and will no doubt return to the forums in the near future when I have some new and exciting developments to discuss

[Siytek]

@thatdjdjkid

So how easy would it be to port the string information coming out of the denon driver into osc to send track titles to touchosc or lemur? because that would be awesome.

The data produced by Traktor for the Denon is all MIDI so I would have thought this would be quite straight forward given the right tools. The MIDI data could be passed out of Traktor over a ‘virtual MIDI cable’ to a program which could convert the data to OSC. This program would also need to be able to convert the MIDI bytes into a format which controlled a display over OSC. I have not had any time to experiment with Max for Live yet, but I think this program is the kind of thing you would need to use to achieve this.

[MiL0]

good to see you back on the forums man… you and djnecro made some really interesting threads/posts… this place is kinda boring nowadays

[paradajz]

Can Traktor output deck playing/deck not playing info? I’m building my own MIDI controller and I’ve got LED indicator on the play button so if I could somehow get info about when the track stopped playing I would turn that LED off.

Sorry for bumping btw.

[fullenglishpint]

Yeh, add out > deck common > play/pause.

[paradajz]

@fullenglishpint

Yeh, add out > deck common > play/pause.

Yeah I figured it. Thanks anyways.

[Joel_Santos]

Still trying to figure this out to use with my teensy… Not getting it!

[hycday]

huge bump here

Is there any clear guide/tutorial/easy way to actually do that ?
via the HC4500 or via Autohotkey or via anything else ? Also saw in another thread the same question raised (Output "artist - track" name from Traktor)

@MiL0

That’s possible using the Autohotkey script I’m writing (thanks to djnecro and siytek for working out all the tricky bits). So far, I’ve got a Windows exe that acts sits between Traktor and your controller and reads the artist/track name (endlessly! see the ‘bugs’ above). This information could easily be written to a text file. Can I ask what you intend to do with this text afterwards? It might help me to customise the script to better suit you.

Two disadvantages:

• It requires Windows (no AHK support on MacOSX)
• It requires a virtual midi input, rather than being plug’n’play

@MiL0 did you manage to do it finally?

or to make it even easier, is there any way to extract just the trackname/artist name of deck A/B to a txt file ?

thank you for ANY help !

[spyderdyne]

This could be used for triggering external workflows!

@Siytek

Hi All

This has already been discussed in another thread however it was decided that it was probably a good idea to put the info in a new thread.

Firstly… here it is in action!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gQBgCKsGgc

Here is the info I posted about how its done…

By using the MIDI outputted for the Denon HC4500. When you add a HC4500 to your list of controllers, Traktor will start to output MIDI for the track name, artist and time. Its not an option you can select in the ‘add out’ section in Traktor, it happens in the background as soon as you add the DN4500 controller and select a MIDI OUT port. I used the Denon MIDI sheet to get the info

Here is the sheet I used, Denon MIDI (page 7) : HC4500 MIDI Command List

As only 7 bits of the MIDI data messages are available (the first bit is used to identify the message type) and the LCD needs 8 bits of data to display a character, each character needs to be transmitted in two control change messages. The first bit is used to idenfify the message, nothing to do with LCD but will be used in your code by the MIDI IN routine. The next three bits are discarded, and the final 4 bits are used for the data. The first control change message contains the first 4 bits of the 8-bit LCD character data, and the second CC message contains the second 4 bits, so…

X000AAAA
+
X000BBBB

AAAABBBB

Where X is the message identifier bit, the ‘0s’ are discarded, A is the first CC and B is the second CC.

Assuming you have Arduino sucessfully receiving MIDI CC, by loading two CC messages into cc_data1 and cc_data2 the following code is a simplified way of getting the MIDI messages to the LCD. The actual code uses bitwise (see arduino website) to join the two nibbles together and simplified looks like this…

This line shifts the first 4 bits of the first message along 4 places to make
0000AAAA into AAAA0000
lcd_nibble1 = (cc_data1 << 4);

This line takes the data from the second CC message and passes it to a variable for the LCD routine
lcd_nibble2 = cc_data2;

Now we have the following
lcd_nibble1 = AAAA0000
lcd_nibble2 = 0000BBBB

Now we need to merge the two using the bitwise OR operator…
lcd_output = lcd_nibble1 | lcd_nibble2;

so now ‘lcd_output’ is AAAABBBB, a complete byte which can be passed straight to the lcd.print command using the standard Arduino LCD library…
lcd.print(lcd_output);

Now this code could be better as the library will break the byte up back into nibbles to pass to the LCD using the 4-bit interface (as my design uses 4-bit connection) so when I get some time, ill most likely make a few mods to the library to save some considerable processing time! However at the moment in development, this method works great and is a good way to simply use the standard Arduino LCD library in 4 or 8 bit mode.

There is one more thing, I described how to pass the CC data to the LCD but nothing about CC numbers. The value of the CC message relates to the character but the CC number determines both the character position and identifies whether the message is the first or second nibble of data. Its all in the Denon MIDI sheet. For example…

If you (or Traktor!) wanted to display the letter ‘A’ in the second (of 16) character position and on the first line you would use the following…

The character 8-bit code (from Denon or Hitachi LCD datasheet) is 0100 for the first nibble and 0001 for the second nibble, so…

CC message 1 = 0001 = 1 (in decimal)
CC message 2 = 0100 = 4

From the Denon sheet, CC number 2 (0x02 in hex) represents the first nibble for the second character on the first line of the display. CC number 34 (0x22 in hex) represents the second nibble for the second character on the first line of the display, so…

CC#02 value 1
CC#34 value 4

will display the letter ‘A’ in the second char position on the first line. BTW Deck A will output all this info on channel 1 and Deck B will output it on channel 2… so my advice if your designing a controller with the Denon LCD system, reserve ch1 and ch2 for the LCD data!

Here is the actual code with bits removed that dont relate to the LCD (easier to understand! ), please note the MIDI channel is currently ignored but a simple if or switch statement could be included to check the channel is correct or identify whether the data is from deck A or deck B, just havent got round to doing it yet! to use this code the receiveMIDI routine is fired whenever the serial port data is read and verified to be a recognised MIDI message. The following variables must be passed to the routine…

statusType = type of message, CC, note on, note off etc…
MIDIchannel = self explanatory!
param1 = first parameter of data (for CC this would be the CC number)
param2 = second parameter of data (for CC this would be the CC value)

void receiveMIDI(byte statusType, byte MIDIchannel, byte param1, byte param2){

switch (statusType) {

break;
case 0xB0:
///// IF MESSAGE IS CONTROL CHANGE MESSAGE (0xB0) /////

switch(param1){ // CHECKS CC NUMBER, MSB GETS PUT IN tn_byte1

case  0x01:
tn_byte1 = (param2 << 4);
break;
case  0x02:
tn_byte1 = (param2 << 4);
break;
case  0x03:
tn_byte1 = (param2 << 4);
break;
case  0x04:
tn_byte1 = (param2 << 4);
break;
case  0x05:
tn_byte1 = (param2 << 4);
break;
case  0x07:
tn_byte1 = (param2 << 4);
break;
case  0x08:
tn_byte1 = (param2 << 4);
break;
case  0x09:
tn_byte1 = (param2 << 4);
break;
case  0x21: // BEGIN LSB, MSB IS READY IN tn_byte1
tn_byte2 = param2;
tn_output = tn_byte1 | tn_byte2;
track_name(0 , 0 , tn_output); // FIRES LCD PRINT WITH CO-ORDS AND CHAR DATA
break;
case  0x22:
tn_byte2 = param2;
tn_output = tn_byte1 | tn_byte2;
track_name(1 , 0 , tn_output);
break;
case  0x23:
tn_byte2 = param2;
tn_output = tn_byte1 | tn_byte2;
track_name(2 , 0 , tn_output);
break;
case  0x24:
tn_byte2 = param2;
tn_output = tn_byte1 | tn_byte2;
track_name(3 , 0 , tn_output);
break;
case  0x25:
tn_byte2 = param2;
tn_output = tn_byte1 | tn_byte2;
track_name(4 , 0 , tn_output);
break;
case  0x27:
tn_byte2 = param2;
tn_output = tn_byte1 | tn_byte2;
track_name(5 , 0 , tn_output);
break;
case  0x28:
tn_byte2 = param2;
tn_output = tn_byte1 | tn_byte2;
track_name(6 , 0 , tn_output);
break;
case  0x29:
tn_byte2 = param2;
tn_output = tn_byte1 | tn_byte2;
track_name(7 , 0 , tn_output);
break;

}

}

}

void track_name(byte lcd_col, byte lcd_row, byte lcd_data){

lcd.setCursor(lcd_col , lcd_row);
lcd.print(lcd_data);

}

enjoy

Here is the post about the board itself and the spec im aiming to achieve…

• Arduino based design using ATMega168 (or 328) with on-board MIDI I/O port
• 48 Analogue / Digital inputs or outputs (6 ports with 8 pins, each can be either I or O) by use of on-board multiplexers
• Built-in twin 8-LED bargraph VU meter, controlled by MIDI CC
• 8x2 (or 16x2 if you want) LCD display
• Menu system allows for changes without reprogramming, so Arduino is optional, the MIDI config can be changed with the LCD menu
• Supports the display of Traktor track name, artist and time on the LCD display (Uses/hijacks the data Traktor sends out for the Denon HC4500 LCD display)

There is no built-in FTDI chip like there is with the Arduino boards however there is a connector for an FTDI programmer, I use the Modern Device USB-BUB, http://shop.moderndevice.com/products/usb-bub, the little red board shown in my picture below

Im keen to get some feedback about whether peeps are interested in this kind of product aimed specifically at Traktor or Ableton. This is only a prototype board meant for testing all the features, so it looks a bit of a mess! Please excuse rubbish mobile phone camera pictures too!

I have submitted a feature request for Traktor to send track load and track unload messages:

TP-11697 Please implement metadata notifications on LOAD and UNLOAD

If this data can be pulled some other way by modifying my TKS4 mapping to send track info over Midi or otherwise to Ableton this would suffice. Here is my project.

If this can be accomplished without adding work to the NI queue or changing Traktor in any way I would love to try it. I am going to check out your work and see if I can utilize it.

Thanks.

[the_bastet]

I would love to do something like this with the browsers in both Traktor and Serato.

[MiL0]

seems like this should be easier now that we have the S8 - has anyone ever tried sniffing / reverse engineering the communication protocol?

[ErikMinekus]

Yes, I’m working on a QML file (QML files hold all the logic for the S8, S5 and D2) that sends track information to a Node.js server, after which you can display it on a webpage or send it somewhere else. It still needs some work though to get it 100% reliable.

[kokospalme]

first of all:

great ideas and great work so far!
I’m working on a similar project to get my old broken cdj 800 back to life, ready for midi and with a little extra things that could be displayed on a display. The ATmega168 could be a bit small for that, but an STM32 M3 or M4 could work…
I was wondering which information I can get from Traktor in general. Maybe we could get the Waveform information through usb (maybe it has to be an HID-based controller instead if MIDI?)

what do you guys think?

[DJDoubleYou]

@ErikMinekus

Yes, I’m working on a QML file (QML files hold all the logic for the S8, S5 and D2) that sends track information to a Node.js server, after which you can display it on a webpage or send it somewhere else. It still needs some work though to get it 100% reliable.

Did you ever finish this? Even a half baked project would be cool & I can help if you want, I’m considering using this instead of the Denon thing for my controller.

@MiL0

seems like this should be easier now that we have the S8 - has anyone ever tried sniffing/reverse-engineering the communication protocol?

Yhea I wanna get a D2 just to see what they are doing with the display data, would be so awesome if we could jack this, I wonder if they are sending visual display data or just the info and are rendering it on the controller itself.

[ErikMinekus]

@DJDoubleYou

Did you ever finish this? Even a half baked project would be cool & I can help if you want, I’m considering using this instead of the Denon thing for my controller.

Funny, I hadn’t touched that code for 3 years, but I actually revived it last week and finished it. It’s very reliable now. The Node.js part is unfinished, but I’m sure you could whip something up once you see what data it sends. I’ll put it up on GitHub soon.

[QUOTE]
Yhea I wanna get a D2 just to see what they are doing with the display data, would be so awesome if we could jack this, I wonder if they are sending visual display data or just the info and are rendering it on the controller itself.[/QUOTE]

Traktor renders the entire D2 screen on the computer and sends it to the controller, the D2 itself doesn’t do much. I’m not sure if you could trick Traktor into sending the screen somewhere else.

[DJDoubleYou]

@ErikMinekus

Funny, I hadn’t touched that code for 3 years, but I actually revived it last week and finished it. It’s very reliable now. The Node.js part is unfinished, but I’m sure you could whip something up once you see what data it sends. I’ll put it up on GitHub soon.

Traktor renders the entire D2 screen on the computer and sends it to the controller, the D2 itself doesn’t do much. I’m not sure if you could trick Traktor into sending the screen somewhere else.

Wow thanks for both of these things! Was super curious about this for a long time and love to check out that code on GH.

[DJDoubleYou]

@ErikMinekus

Funny, I hadn’t touched that code for 3 years, but I actually revived it last week and finished it. It’s very reliable now. The Node.js part is unfinished, but I’m sure you could whip something up once you see what data it sends. I’ll put it up on GitHub soon.

Traktor renders the entire D2 screen on the computer and sends it to the controller, the D2 itself doesn’t do much. I’m not sure if you could trick Traktor into sending the screen somewhere else.

Hey Erik any chance this is on GH? I would love to try it out on my new S1 OLED screen:

[ErikMinekus]

Here you go: GitHub - ErikMinekus/traktor-api-client: Send live track data from Traktor Pro to a web server

Basically you need a webserver that listens to those endpoints and parses the request body as JSON.

Let me know if you need more help.