libmidi

The goal of the libmidi project is to provide a high-quality MIDI software implementation that is suitable for use on microcontrollers.

Initially, the PIC18 family of microcontrollers will be supported using the Microchip (TM) XC8 compiler. A Makefile is provided for that environment.

This library is ALPHA; it has not been thoroughly reviewed or tested at this time.

Building

git clone https://github.com/mikromodular/libmidi
cd libmidi
make

This assumes that the Microchip XC8 compiler suite is installed on your system. Installing this software is beyond the scope of this README. Please see http://www.microchip.com/mplab/compilers for more details.

Priciples of Operation

The libmidi library employs a callback scheme in which the user registers callback functions to handle only the events that they are interested in. Events for which no handlers are registered will be processed silently by the library.

The callback mechanism is "driven" by invocations of the midi_receive_byte() function, which must be called once for every single byte received from the UART that is configure to read MIDI events. All protocol state is managed by the library.

This design is flexible because it allows the programmer to use it in a polling loop or in an interrupt handler. It should be noted, however, that use within an interrupt handler has not been tested at all, and the author is not yet familiar with this use case. If you're interested in using this library from an interrupt handler, please contact the author so that we can discuss incorporating any changes that might be necessary.

API Lifecycle

The following list outlines the steps, in order, that the programmer must take to use the library.

1. Call midi_init() to perform one-time initializaton of globals.
2. Call midi_register_event_handler() to register callbacks for events (note on, note off, etc.)
3. Call midi_receive_byte() once for every byte received on the UART device. Calling this function "drives" the event dispatch system and may result in callback invocation.

Implementation Notes

• Note On/Off Some devices do not seem to send note off messages. Rather, they send note on messages with a velocity of zero. Your application should probably account for this by checking for this condition and delegating to your note off handler.

Current Status

This library is currently in ALPHA.

Testing

There are no unit tests at this time. Unit tests are planned; they will likely be developed to compile and run locally on the development system and will be executed as part of the continuous integration process once a system has been chosen.

Examples

A simple example of MIDI processing is forthcoming.

Contact

Please see AUTHORS in the root of the repository for contact information.

Dependencies

None

Future Planned Development

• MIDI Transmission (Only receive is supported at this time.)
• Support for multiple MIDI ports (only one in and one out will be supported as part of the first official release.)