touchOSC on android

Using touchosc to control Ardour is possible. Here is a touchosc map to try out in ardour 5.1 or newer. www.ovenwerks.net/control/ardour1.touchosc

TouchOSC and the above map require some settings.

In Ardour: enable OSC in Control Surfaces and open the gui. Set port to manual and set the port touchosc will receive feedback on. (the default 8000 is fine) This map likes banksize to be 8 and gain to be position. The default for strip_types will work fine, but set it as you like. It is a good idea after setting things to click the Clear OSC devices button.

On your tablet open a browser and download the above file so it ends up in downloads. Start touchOSC and click the OSC bar. Set Host to the ip of your Ardour computer, Port to send to is 3819, and the receive port is 8000 (from above). zeroconf can be ignored. Then hit the back key and select Layout. Select Add from file and look for the Downloads directory where you downloaded the file above to. Select the file and then look for it’s name in the list and click it. Now hit Done and the layout should load.
In the bottom right corner there is a connect button. Press this slowly and release. you should find the first 8 tracks listed accross the top followed by the name of the current session. On the right side there is a group of controls for whichever track is selected (the same track as the editor mixer). This track may not be one of the 8 on the left. touching one of the red squares under a track name will select that track so it can be adjusted. There is trim level and pan as well as the named buttons. on the bottom you will find transport controls.

In the middle there is a big open space to fill with more buttons for editing operations transport movement marking or what have you.

caveats: The faders/sliders are not nice, they jump to where you first touch. The buttons seem to need a real press, not a tap. touchosc does not know how to do string values so none of the Menu Actions are accessible as such. Touchosc can only do single parameter commands making plugin control impossible.

On the plus side in comparison to Control which I already wrote about, touchosc allows selecting a file from the tablet’s file system, Control’s layout download times out quickly. Touchosc seems to handle more traffic a bit better. The font size can be set too. Control can send strings or multi parameter commands such as select next/previous track.

The best remote control experience on a tablet I have had was with Open Stage Control which does about everything/has nice faders/pots and handles the most traffic. However it is harder to set up as it has to run as a server on the ardour machine with chrome on the tablet.

I do not know what most people would find useful for a tablet control surface. I do not think I would like to do mixes with it (adding faders for the whole bank is possible) as the faders do not really allow fine adjustment. However it is good for remote starting, record arming etc.

Nice little tutorial, I downloaded the app to my phone, and got it to work (well, sort of), I can see the changes in Ardour but not on the phone, is it a bug or a feature ;).

Maybe it will be easier to understand when I get it on my tablet, then I probably will be able to read the text in the buttons too (my phone is kind of small…

Seems to be a good replacement for Ardroid anyway.

I can see the changes on my tablet from Ardour. Feedback does work. It may be that I have missed one of the settings in the tutarial. You did send the connect message? (touching the Connect button on the lower left turns feedback on) I should also create a file with the correct settings that people can put in .config/ardour*/osc/ so they can just select it.

I am also planning to make a phone map that has only one channel plus transport. The above map is tablet based and actually started out as a mixbus project/proof of concept.

Well, lower left makes a little more sense than bottom right corner…

Sorry, I couldn’t resist ;).

Now it works, both from the tablet and the phone.

The only issue now is the bank buttons, I can’t get them to eh, bank, so to speak.
I have a lot of strips to the right but nothing moves. I can see the labels above change but then they change back again. Probably something I do wrong, it usually is…

For now, a Big thank you for the tip and the template, that will spare me a lot of footsteps and keep my bloodpressure at a nice level.

Ralf

@Ralf sorry, I think I did originally have that button lower right… I moved it where it is as being the least like to get hit by accident. The banking I will have to check again to make sure I haven’t broken something. I will also re upload to the web server to make sure that is not having an old file too. The set up should have heart beat running and you should see a red(ish) blinking “LED” in the top right so long as you are connected (means wifi is ok).

Thank you for the feedback.

@Ralf just a thought, when you entered bank size of 8, did you type in 8 and then hit enter? It seems the hitting enter is required for both the bank size and the port number. If the bank size was still 0 internally that would give the response you have.

“Enter” check. It had reverted to zero. Now it works.

Thanks again.

Ralf

it doesn’t work on my phone, only one button(Connect) and a half of another one (Zero).

@sub26nico :slight_smile: I guess I need to make a map that fits a phone. If I have some time later I will do that. It would be very minimal so it is usable will normal sized fingers. A totally different layout.

Thanks for your comment.

Ok, thanks for the answer.I used to control Ardour 4 with Ardroid, but it doesn’t work with Ardour 5.
Ardroid doesn’t have a lot of functions but very useful.
I’m testing TouchOSC on my phone but will buy a tablet as soon as possible.
Thanks for Ardour’s map.

New Ardour TouchOSC maps on github - https://github.com/ovenwerks/ardour-touchOSC

1ch-phn is designed for phones.

@lenovens

Thanks, now I don’t have to buy a bigger phone.

Ralf

I’m trying this new map. It seems to be ok on touchosc on my phone, but I can’t connect it with Ardour.
Can you help me to configure please?

It works, sorry for my last post. Thanks lenovens for the map, it’s gonna be a great tool for my workflow

Hey folks. I found this thread and used the original touchosc layout a bit, but found that it was not as good on a phone. The update seems better, but I wanted something more full-featured and easier to use. With Len’s layout as a starting point, I designed a new one.

It uses 4 pages in order to split up functions and I relied heavily on the “encoder” form for scrubbing position and gain. I included a page dedicated to “track selection” that covers 42 tracks. I was hoping I could find some dynamic thing there, but this was the best I could come up with.

please check it out! enjoy!

EDIT: screenshots

That looks very creative. The Ardour git has a folder for touchosc layouts. You are welcome to submit this layout as a pull request.