The Endeavour Evo with Supercollider on Ubuntu Linux 12.04 (Precise Pangolin)

In a rush? Scroll all the way down to skip the tinker story, rant, and attempts at humor, and get just the instructions on how to get it working.

Oh. My. God.

Sweet Hail Mary Jeebus.

This thing will make me religious again. And I have now got one at home! Just came in today... It is my altar, my power beast, and my sacred connection to the akashic records.

It is a musical keyboard with touch sensors in the keys and an network interface. It is the Endeavour Evo Series One.

I knew it would take a new company to make something new. And realize MIDI is dead. These guys did both.

Since I don't go near Macs these days (Steve at least made imprisonment fun) the first thing I needed to do was get it to work under linux, and the SuperCollier object oriented programming software synthesizer (my second wholly holy grail of computerized musicality).

First I had to know what the evo was doing. So I fired up wireshark and took the Evo's delicious touch sensitive keys for a spin (You don't need to do this to get it working, but it can be helpful for troubleshooting).

sudo apt-get install wireshark
sudo wireshark

Ignore the security warning, we're on a local network
Click the top left Icon and select eth0 wired network
Now plug the evo in and turn it on

And, lo and behold, there were the packets! Clear, crisp OSC packets, the way musical information needs to be transmitted these days.

wireshark-evo — Wireshark displaying evo

Fire up the receptor, the mighty SuperCollider language!


# replace with your supercollider ide
scvim

(in IDE)


(
  // This just dumps whatever SuperCollider is receiving
  OSCFunc.trace(true);
)

Well, not much going on yet. Mash the evo's keyboard all you like, but SuperCollider isn't catching on. And it wouldn't; the evo sends packets from 169.254.31.0 port 0 by default, so we're going to have to bend them around. Luckily, the evo can do DHCP, so the first part of our solution is getting a DHCP server going.


sudo apt-get install isc-dhcp-server

Then back up these config files and edit them to look like this:


# /etc/default/isc-dhcp-server
INTERFACES="eth0"


# /etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf

option domain-name "home.lan";
option domain-name-servers ubuntu.home.lan;
default-lease-time 600;
max-lease-time 7200;
authoritative;
subnet 192.168.175.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
  range 192.168.175.100 192.168.175.200;
  option routers router.home.lan;
}
ddns-update-style none;

Then give yourself the static IP address 192.168.175.11 in Network Manager. To do so

Click the Network Manager Icon, and select Edit connections
Click the Wired connection, and click Edit
Click the tab IPv4-Settings
Unter Addresses, enter 192.168.175.11 as address, 255.255.255.0 as netmask, and 192.168.175.11 as gateway.
Click routes, check the box Use this connection only for resources on its network, and confirm with OK (makes sure plugging in the evo won't bring you offline. If you want to use wired internet again, uncheck the box)
Click Save and then Close

If you know what you're doing you can replace the 192.168.xxx.xxx addresses above with whatever works best for you.


# Restart the DHCP server
sudo /etc/init.d/isc-dhcp-server restart

Now turn the evo off and back on again, and stop and restart wireshark's listening on eth0. And, lo and behold, the evo is now sending from 192.168.175.100! Evo, you smart, smart machine. But SuperCollider still isn't catching on. It must be the pesky port 0 the evo sends on. To my knowledge, there is no way to convince it not to do that, probably short of re-flashing the firmware, and messing with the Evo's firmware is not amongst my current desires. I spend too much time fussing with technology and not enough time being musically creative as it is, and I really don't want to spend any time wondering whether I bricked the thing or not. Speaking of bricking, I did brick my web server once, using a handy linux web server bricking tool called iptables. It allows you to close, reject, re-route and rewrite pretty much any kind of traffic, including your own connection to your sever. Which is a good thing, because the danger also means power. It also runs in the kernel, so I assume it will add little latency (The kernel is part of the upper crust of the hegemony inside your computer, and, like any good autocrat it has all the connections needed to preferentially aquire resources). Could it be that this is the solution to our little port 0 problem? Well, in short, yes. Observe and bow to the mighty kernel (and don't worry, unlike most iptables commands, this one is actually not dangerous!)


# run as root, and also add to the beginning of /etc/rc.local
iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p udp --dport 0 -j REDIRECT --to-ports 57120

This takes all the udp traffic coming in on port 0, and rewrites it to port 57120, which is what SuperCollider likes to listen to by default. Yes, SuperCollider does have the this.openPort(1234); and this.openPorts; commands, but sclang does not seem intent to listen on port 0 under any circumstances. Correctly, I might add, in terms of networking standards. Good luck the kernel doesn't give a fuck. And lo and behold, the messages are coming in!


OSC Message Received:
	time: 1360186197.0399
	address: a NetAddr(192.168.175.100, 4096)
	recvPort: 57120
	msg: [ /endeavour/evo110030/slider, 1, 0, 6 ]

OSC Message Received:
	time: 1360186197.0531
	address: a NetAddr(192.168.175.100, 4096)
	recvPort: 57120
	msg: [ /endeavour/evo110030/slider, 1, 0, 8 ]

OSC Message Received:
	time: 1360186197.0601
	address: a NetAddr(192.168.175.100, 4096)
	recvPort: 57120
	msg: [ /endeavour/evo110030/note, 1, 1, 37 ]

OSC Message Received:
	time: 1360186197.0611
	address: a NetAddr(192.168.175.100, 4096)
	recvPort: 57120
	msg: [ /endeavour/evo110030/slider, 1, 1, 3 ]

OSC Message Received:
	time: 1360186197.0671
	address: a NetAddr(192.168.175.100, 4096)
	recvPort: 57120
	msg: [ /endeavour/evo110030/slider, 1, 1, 2 ]

OSC Message Received:
	time: 1360186197.0741
	address: a NetAddr(192.168.175.100, 4096)
	recvPort: 57120
	msg: [ /endeavour/evo110030/slider, 1, 1, 0 ]

OSC Message Received:
	time: 1360186197.3091
	address: a NetAddr(192.168.175.100, 4096)
	recvPort: 57120
	msg: [ /endeavour/evo110030/note, 1, 0, 34 ]

And yeah, I do like writing 'lo and behold'. Lo and behold, I wrote lo and behold! Lo and behold, you can now turn the tracing off again.


(
  OSCFunc.trace(false);
)

And this, nicely, also gives away how to work with the messages from SuperCollider. Here's some code that actually creates some decent sound pressing and sliding keys.



# Example SuperCollider synthdef and OSC-handler

# To start playing with the Endeavour Evo
# There's a few glitches with the slider handling
# that needs fixing but it will do as a demo.

# (c) 2013 Carlo Capocasa. MIT license applies.

(
s.waitForBoot({
  (
  SynthDef.new(\evosizer_sc, {
    arg gate, key, velocity = 0, slider = 128;
    var pitch,sound;
    slider=slider * 0.0009765625;
    slider=Lag.kr(slider,0.1);
    key = if(key < 24, key, key+12);
    pitch = DegreeToKey.kr(Scale.chromatic.as(LocalBuf),key,add:24).midicps;
    sound = Saw.ar(pitch, 14*(1/pitch));
    sound = RLPF.ar(sound, pitch * (0.9+ (32*slider)),0.25);
    sound=sound*Linen.kr(gate, 0.02,1,0.02,2);
    Out.ar(0, Pan2.ar(sound,0));
  }).send(s);
  )
});

{
  var synths,note_responder,slide_responder;
  synths= Array.newClear(48); // The evo has 48 keys
  note_responder = OSCFunc.new({
    arg msg;
    var synth;
    if (1==msg[2] && synths[msg[1]]==nil, {
      synths[msg[1]] = Synth.new(\evosizer_sc, [gate: 1, key: msg[1], velocity: msg[3]], s);
    },{

      synths[msg[1]].set(\gate, 0);
      synths[msg[1]] = nil;
    });
  }, "/endeavour/evo110030/note");
  slide_responder=OSCFunc.new({
    arg msg;
    var synth = synths[msg[1]];
    if (nil != synth) {
      synth.set(\slider, msg[3]);
    };
  }, "/endeavour/evo110030/slider");
}.value;

)

Step-By-Step:

Give your wired network a static IP
1. Click the Network Manager Icon, and select Edit connections
2. Click the Wired connection, and click Edit
3. Click the tab IPv4-Settings
4. Unter Addresses, enter 192.168.175.11 as address, 255.255.255.0 as netmask, and 192.168.175.11 as gateway.
5. Click routes, check the box Use this connection only for resources on its network, and confirm with OK (make sure plugging in the evo won't bring you offline. If you want to use wired internet again, uncheck the box)
6. Click Save and then Close
Set up DHCP server # run this sudo apt-get install isc-dhcp-server # Put this in/etc/default/isc-dhcp-server INTERFACES="eth0" # Put this in /etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf option domain-name "home.lan"; option domain-name-servers ubuntu.home.lan; default-lease-time 600; max-lease-time 7200; authoritative; subnet 192.168.175.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 { range 192.168.175.100 192.168.175.200; option routers router.home.lan; } ddns-update-style none; # Then restart your dhcp server sudo /etc/init.d/isc-dhcp-server restart
Turn on & Plug in the evo Turn it off and on again if it's already on and connected, so it will get itself a new IP address
Route evo messages to SuperCollider # run as root, and also add to the beginning of /etc/rc.local iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p udp --dport 0 -j REDIRECT --to-ports 57120
Make sure SuperCollider is receiving the messages # Run this in your SuperCollider IDE to make sure you are receiving the messages OSCFunc.trace(true); # Turn it back off OSCFunc.trace(false);

Use OSCFunc to receive messages.

See above for an example.