Ableton Forum

Hello all,

For my quadriphony project, I am currently designing a custom MIDI controler based on a Raspberry Pi 5, with a big touch screen, 8 motorised faders, a joystick (to manually control Surround Panner), an ultrasound theremin like modulation device and a lidar to use the movements of a dancer to control the sound (either quadraphonic panning or other kinds of modulation like filter cutoff, etc.)
The hardware as well as the software side are a no brainer thanks to Gemini who will help me handle the project (have never coded in Python for the Raspberry Pi but I do know Arduino in C pretty well), but the thing that questions me is the communication with the Push...
Can I ping the Push in MIDI to ask for all kind of information ? Should I write a custom Max object for the Push to communicate with my device in MIDI or can I write a Surface Control script ? I guess the surface control script can't be copied to the Push using standard ways, but by extracting the SSD from the Push and placing it in an USB enclosure, I could access the file system and copy the file myself...
Or would it be possible to fake another device, like f.e. the LaunchPad, but then I guess I should send the Push like an ID for it to recognize me as a LaunchPad ?
Or what if I wanted to try the Mackie Control protocol ? Is there some documentation and reference on the net about that ?
For the faders for example, I'd like to make them work like they do on the PreSonus Faderport 8 (that uses MCU), with the track names, changing devices parameters, etc. Also I'm probably going to implement local (to the controler) macros, f.e. record a loop with the joystick for the Surround Panner instead of counting on an LFO.

Any pointers ?

Faking another supported controller is probably your best bet atm… unless you’re ready to go the M4L route.
There’s a topic in the forum about hacking the SSD and modify files, that’s probably a valid hack if you know what you’re doing.
Once again, I’d probably use M4L instead but you’ll need to learn how to patch in Max if you never did it. Max can work with several programming languages so maybe your current skills could help.

M4L it is, then... I don't like to have to hack the system, so unless Ableton can give us a custom controler development kit ( ), I guess Max 4 Live is a more elegant solution.
Anyways, this whole project is a huge challenge with so many things to learn, might as well add a new one

But I guess that a M4L device implies I drop it in a hidden track or something ?

It depends on how the device works: could be on a specific track, or a « hidden » one, or the Main track.

Got it.

So I have access in M4L to all the information on the set, like track & clip names, devices names on each track, devices parameters, etc. and I could send this information in real time by MIDI to my controller ?
Can I have access to all the parameters of other M4L objects running in the set too ? (like Surround Panner for example)

Ok so I decided to get a PreSonus Faderport 8 and only develop specific controls for the quadriphony, like the theremin, the lidar and the joystick.
Much (much much) less work, I don't have to emulate, hack or reverse engineer anything, and can just create M4L devices specific to the functions I need so I could drop the device on the tracks that need it, no more need for a project wide M4L object.