Has anyone checked to see if the Slate Media “Raven” virtual mixer touchscreen surface works with Ardour?
The price of the basic small version came down to a point where it’s attractive, but I’d like first to hear from anyone who has first-hand knowledge.
Thanks ahead of time, and Happy Holidays to all.
Harrison recently posted a picture in their G+ stream of Mixbus (which for this purpose is identical to Ardour) running on a very large touchscreen. Not sure if it was the Raven or something else. I have no idea what was done (if anything) to make that work.
There's no reason to expect it to not work as long as you only use single-touch, which will mostly appear to the program as if you were using a mouse. Multi-touch is much, much more complex to support (it requires fundamentally different programming concepts, since there can be multiple items being dragged at the same time).
Re-reading your post, I think you are asking about using the Raven as a control surface.They provide no information I could find after a quick search that indicates what protocol they are using. The most obvious thing would be Mackie Control - if they are then it can certainly work with Ardour. You might need to edit a device info file in a text editor before it works correctly. However, there’s very little info about their protocol, so you’d probably need to ask them what the Raven uses. It seems almost certain that their other product, the Slate Control, uses their own custom protocol since it requires DB25 cables.
@AP_in_DC From a quick read of the manuals, it appears the Raven is exactly what it says, a virtual mixer… AKA software on your computer that uses their touch screen. So add to the price of their HW and SW, the cost of a Mac/pc if you wish to use a Linux DAW. The Raven does seem to be able to use a Mackie control protocol… at least they say it is “V-Control Pro” compatible and… http://vcontrolpro.com/documentation/#setupapps seems to show the use of MCP (in fact, reading farther, it seems the Raven SW uses V-Control internally). So if you are running the macos/win version of Ardour, it may be possible to use the raven SW as is… on the other hand, they do charge ($99) for each DAW you use… I am not sure if that is more than button/function mapping though. The thing to remember is do not choose the protools mapping as it is HUI, choose Logic perhaps instead.
If you can find an android with a big enough screen, maybe an odroid running android image, just using V-Control Pro may be an option as well.
For a pure Linux solution (if that is what you are looking for) take a look at https://community.ardour.org/node/14083 and follow the link in the first message. Not multi-touch… (I think) Also, running Open Stage Control and using Chrome to access it (requires an OSC map for Ardour) does seem to have multi-touch. Finding a large enough android may be a problem though 
In my experiments with a r-pi (debian linux) with a touch screen, it seems just getting the touch screen to work as a mouse (like android) is not the default. Touching just moves the mouse, touch and hold sends a left click but will not drag. It should be touch locates and clicks/drags, long hold is right click. However, an application that understands multi-touch could just work… ie. if the DAW sw would work with multi-touch, then the raven SW would not be needed, just use the DAW GUI.