Control Windows 8 Apps with TouchOSC and without a router

Posted: Dezember 22nd, 2015 ˑ Filed under: Mobile Apps, Software ˑ Comments Closed

Having control over your workspace is probably the most basic but not always the most trivial demand. Ever thought about having a MIDI/OSC-controller on your phone? Most popular apps to do so are Liine’s Lemur or Hexler’s TouchOSC. Both applications are modular OSC and MIDI control surfaces for Android- and iDevices to control Windows and OSX programs (and even Linux, check here). They allow to remote control and receive feedback from any soft- or hardware that implement the OSC or MIDI protocols.

TouchOSC comes with many controller layouts for Apple Logic Pro/Express, Renoise, Pure Data, Max/MSP/Jitter, Max for Live, OSCulator, VDMX, Resolume Avenue 3, Modul8, Plogue Bidule, Reaktor, Quartz Composer, Vixid VJX16-4, Supercollider, FAW Circle, vvvv, Derivative TouchDesigner, Isadora and many others.
The interface provides a number of different touch controls to send and receive messages: Faders / Rotary controls / Encoder controls / Push buttons / Toggle buttons / XY pads / Multi-faders / Multi-push / Multi-toggles / Multi-xy pads / LEDs / Labels / Time & battery displays.
Other than most desktop MIDI-controllers with knobs TouchOSC can send Accelerometer data. The application comes with example default layouts and completely custom layouts can be constructed using the free TouchOSC Editor application.

BUT: Available on the market for some years with ever changing OS interfaces, a cross-platform controller connection remains hard to achieve: It seems to be super complicated to connect TouchOSC in Windows 8 without a router (which you probably won’t have access to at xyz venue).
So here comes our Visual Society six-steps-TouchOSC-Windows-8-without-router walkthrough!

TouchOSC is a system of three apps that you will have to install:
– TouchOSC mobile app for Android or iOS.
– TouchOSC Bridge for OSX or Windows to send and receive Open Sound Control messages over a Wi-Fi network using the UDP protocol, supporting both CoreMIDI and the Line 6 MIDI Mobilizer interfaces for sending and receiving MIDI messages.
– TouchOSC Editor for OSX or Windows to create and edit your own custom control layouts and to upload custom layouts from computer to mobile device.

To make a connection both devices have to be connected either to the same wifi-router network or directly through an ad-hoc-wifi network set up on the computer. Unfortunately UI support for ad-hoc-networks was dropped by in Windows 8, 8.1, 10, which makes it necessary to set up the ad-hoc-network via command console / cmd:

How to set up TouchOSC in Windows 8 with CMD
1.) disconnect your computer from any wifi host networks
2.) Type into Windows search bar: „cmd“
3.) right-click and run cmd.exe as admin
4.) in console type: „netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode=allow ssid=VisualSociety key=visualsociety“ (key must be 8-63 characters long. This network will be saved to your internet settings)

5.) to start the ad-hoc-network type: „netsh wlan start hostednetwork“
— join your new wifi network with the mobile device (SSID=VisualSociety PW=visualsociety)
— start TouchOSC app on the mobile device
— to load layouts or to control the computer, the TouchOSC app (mobile device = client) needs to know the host’s (= computer) network IP adress. If the TouchOSC can’t see your computer automatically you will find the computer’s host adress in Windows > Internet Settings > Active Ad-Hoc-Network > Connection > Details > IPv4-adress (mine is 192.168.183.2)
type this in for „Host“. (Works for MIDI, OSC didn’t test.)
6.) to stop the ad-hoc-network type: „netsh wlan stop hostednetwork“

cmd-hostednetwork

How to set up TouchOSC in Windows 8 with .bat file
To make everything faster Visual Society gives you this little christmas batch file for three-click execution: TouchOSC Batch (usage at your own peril).
– unzip
– right-click and run TouchOSC Batch.bat as administrator
– type any key to: disconnect from any networks, create ad-hoc-network SSID TouchOSC PW:hexler, start ad-hoc-network
(now connect to this network with your mobile device and start TouchOSC)
– type any key to: stop ad-hoc-network, reconnect to previous wifi (change settings like name of last wifi with text editor, save encoded as ANSI)
– type any key to: quit .bat file

have fun!

For more check http://hexler.net/touchosc