Side Project: Data Stucture – Application

If you were patient enough and read through the two previous posts on this subject, you might be wondering how this applies to the PU-2 pedal board in practice. Even if you were not patient enough, here’s how the data structure will be used:

The data structure was developed to provide a very simple programming interface for the pedal board, using a simple text file format, using CSV conventions (Comma Separated Values). I wrote a short program in Processing that will read the text file and send it to the pedal board, where it will be stored permanently (until overwritten). The processing program is free. In fact, it uses Java as a platform. Java is free and most probably already installed on your computer. The source code will be available on this site by the time the beta pedal board is out.

I wrote a utility program that will read a SySex file used on the Behringer FCB1010. Since the FCB1010 was my starting platform, I figured I could write the code necessary for users to recuperate SysEx file contents, even those created by other programming interfaces. The utility reads the SysEx file and creates a CSV file that is compatible with the PU-2. This way, the user will not have to re-enter previously saved data. I also wrote the code for the PU-2 to directly read SysEx data from a Mac or a PC, but I will only release that code on demand, as the PU-2 will not be using the FCB1010 SysEx format to exchange data.

At this time, the data structure in the CSV file is:

Sequence number, switch number, Midi command type, Midi channel, command, value, comment.

Here’s an example in CSV (just a text file):testdata.csv

If you work on a Mac, Texedit will open the file. You could also open it with Numbers. On a PC, there’s a good chance that Excel will try to open the file right away. The file is a plain text file, but the extension .csv will tickle the computer and it might offer to import it. The fact that the first row is column headers makes all this a lot easier!

I will publish Numbers and .xls files within a few days. Using Excel or Numbers will let me put some validation logic right into the input file. I will do that so you don’t have to send the file to the utility program to test its validity.

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