SYSEX update to Digitakt/Digitone?

[vitaminman12]

Hi everyone,

Brand new user, received my MRCC yesterday 

Preface: I know that I can update my hardware via USB; I wanted to use this exercise as an opportunity to learn the MRCC. 

What I want to do: I'm trying to send a firmware update to 2 Elektron Digi* boxes. The updates are .syx files.

What happened: I tried doing it this morning following the manual and videos for routing traffic from a PC to a DIN out, and the send failed. When I say 'failed', I mean that the Digi* remained stuck in a mode where it was waiting for data to arrive. 

Question: Before I go down a rabbit hole, is the MRCC capable of passing SYSEX files from a PC to a device? I think I remember that the Arturia Keystep Pro was not able to pass SYSEX from a PC.

Thanks,

Nick

[Dark Waves]

There have been discussions about both SysEx and USB connectivity, and there is ongoing work to improve their handling.  In some cases, devices aren't fully class compliant, apparently.  Have a look through the forum for these topics if you like, and also check out the USB compatibility tracker: https://conductivelabs.com/mrcc-usb-host...y-tracker/ where some Elektron devices are mentioned.

[Jesse Johannesen]

Hi Nick, and welcome.
To add to this, it's always a good idea to connect a device directly to the computer to do any firmware updates, and this is usually recommended by the manufacturer in the update instructions. In this particular case none of the Elektron boxes we've tried has been compatible with the USB host ports on the MRCC unfortunately (unless something has changed with one of our recent fw updates which is possible. If you have been able to use these boxes VIA MRCC USB please do let me know). We have some plans in place to get to the bottom of some of these issues, however it is still largely unknown as to how these efforts will pay out. More to come on that in the next 3 months I would guess.

At this point I believe Sysex works across all standard connections (from and to USB/DIN/PC ports), with a 512 (or is it 256?) bit per packet limit. This will likely not be useful for every situation, as not every device will let you tell it how many bits it should be sending, but it could be useful for sending presets from a librarian software for the most part.

I don't remember whether or not Steve was able to get the SYSEX handler written for the Expander ports yet or if that is still a WIP.

Jesse

[vitaminman12]

Hello,

Thank you both for your replies.

Please see screenshot, it's a visual describing my cable setup and the path of the SYSEX file to the Digi*.

I guess my question is, in theory, should this setup work?

Thanks,

Nick

[Dark Waves]

Hello,

Thank you both for your replies.

Please see screenshot, it's a visual describing my cable setup and the path of the SYSEX file to the Digi*.

I guess my question is, in theory, should this setup work?

Thanks,

Nick

As far as I know, yes (I may not be the best person to ask, only the first).  One thing you may check is whether the handshake between devices requires bidirectional communication, which means adding a MIDI cable from the Elektron to one of the MRCC inputs and routing it to the PC.

[Jesse Johannesen]

Hey Nick,
I just checked with the team on this and the maximum SYSEX packet size is going to be 512 bits from any source to any destination. So this means you could send SYSEX to control the Behringer Neutron via the control app for instance, but you couldn't send a massive update to the firmware most likely. As I mentioned if there is a way to update the device by directly connecting it to the computer I would use that rather thank trying to jump through hoops to use SysEx over MIDI (unless that is not possible in which case you may require access to some other hardware).

The described routing looks like it should work for any other MIDI control (*that I can think of)