martinwittmann/impulse-bitwig

An improved control script for the Novation Impulse 25, 49 and 61 allowing Bitwig users to use all available features.

Impulse25 Bitwig

An improved control script for the Novation Impulse 25/49/61 allowing Bitwig users to use all features of the Impulse devices. Additionally the target of this script is to allow users to access the most important functions of Bitwig directly from the Impulse without using a mouse or computer keyboard.

Basic features

• Working: Midi keyboard
• Working: Channel aftertouch
• Working: Modwheel
• Working: Pitchbend
• Working: All rotary encoders
• Working: Transport buttons
• Working: Master fader
• Working: Midi/mixer button
• Working: Track select buttons (shift + octave up/down)
• Working: Plugin, midi, mixer, page up, page down buttons
• Working: All drum pads including aftertouch
• Not implemented (yet): Clip launch functions
• Not implementd (yet): Autodiscovery. The controller must be added manually atm.

Regarding Impulse 49 and 61 versions

Since I don't own these devices for now the 8 faders and fader buttons probably won't work. But while reverse engineering the Impulse's template data I most probably found the relevant midi messages the faders and buttons send. So, as soon I find the time I can add support for these too.

Advanced features

Since the Impulse devices have quite a lot of buttons and LEDs and a Display we can send data to, I want to make as many Bitwig features as I can accessible via the Impulse.

Midi messages the impulse accepts

• Drum pad cc/note on values: Set the brightness of the background led.
• Midi / Plugin / Mixer State
• F0 00 20 29 00 71 0F 5A 00 00 00 06 09 05 F7: Go into boot menu and be ready to receive a firmware update. This is the first part of a firmware update.
• F0 00 20 29 00 70 F7: Get firmware version. Example response: F0 00 20 29 00 70 00 00 06 05 08 00 00 06 09 03 0D F7 == Boot version: 658, Main version: 693
• F0 00 20 29 [sender midi id] 06 01 01 01 F7: Device inquiry + activating the connection to the computer. Example response: F0 00 20 29 67 07 19 F7 == 719 is the device id of the Impulse 25. I can't find the Pdf anymore where I found this but I think 71A is the 49 key version and 71B the Impulse 61.
• F0 00 20 29 00 08 [8 bytes of ascii text] F7: Show the given text on the text display of the Impulse.
• F0 00 20 20 00 09 [3 bytes of ascii text] F7: Display text in the big 3 charachter area of the display.
• F0 00 20 29 43 00 00 [impulse template] F7: Write the given template data into the ram. This is the same as manually changing all settings/mappings and lights up the 'save' element on the display meaning that a user can save the current settings as a template.

Template sysex

At any time when we send the template sysex message we can overwrite the currently selected (or even changed and unsaved) template.
There is almost complete documenation of the template data format. So it's quite easy to create your own template without having to manually set all values on an Impulse device.

Limitations of the Impulse devices

While reverse engineering and testing all features of the Impulse 25 I came across several things that might not be intutive and owners should know. Maybe someone from Novation/Focusrite reads this at some point and uses it as inspiration for firmware updates.

• Some, but not all buttons send midi messages both for pressing and releasing them.
• The Midi/mixer button below the master fader sends messages only on button release and sends different CCs depending on the button's state.
• The Octave up/down buttons change the keyboard octave only on button release - this feels slow while performing. (It would be extremely useful if this would send a midi CC message.)
• When changing the octave the display lights up an 'octave' element. But this is only lit directly after pressing an octave button. I'd have expected this to keep being lit as long as the octave is changed.
• (BUG?) When pressing shift + any other button and then releasing them, shift does not send a midi message for the button release.
• In midi state (after pressing the midi/page-down button) everytime an ecoder is rotated, the text display is set to 'CC# XX'. It's not possible to send text to the display in this case because it gets overwritten immediately. The same goes for the master fader in midi mode.
• The encoders in plugin and mixer state send a CC with the direction of the change while in midi mode they send absolute values. This is a limitation because we can't use the encoders in midi mode as generic buttons since when the absolute value is the minimum or maximum no more midi messages are sent.
• We can change the background color of the drum pads by sending midi messages to the Impulse. BUT only if the device is in clip launch mode. What we can do tough is setting the brightness by sending a midi message.
• In the default template (BascMidi) the rotary encoders 7 and 8 use the same CC values as rewind and fast forward making it impossible to distinguish between them.
• There's no way of programmatically triggering a dump of the current template. If we could do this it would be possible to programmatically change specific values which would enable us to add many features that are impossible right now.

Color codes for the drum pads:

When the impulse is in clip launch mode (and only then), we can set the pad's colors by sending CC events: sendNoteOn(0xb0, 60 + [0-7], [color]); These are the available colors:

0	Off
1	Red dark
2	Red medium
3	Red full
4	Off
5	same as 1
6	same as 2
7	same as 3
8	Red dark blinking
9	Red medium1 blinking
10	Red medium2 blinking
11	Red full blinking
12	same as 8
13	same as 9
14	same as 10
15	same as 11
16:	Green
17	Yellowish green
18	Light orange
19	Orange
20	same as 16
21	same as 17
22	same as 18
23	same as 19
24	Green blinking
25	Yellowish green blinking
26	Light orange blinking
27	Orange blinking
28	same as 24
29	same as 25
30	same as 26
31	same as 27
32	Green
33	Yellowish green
34	Greenish yellow
35	Yellow
36	same as 32
37	same as 33
38	same as 34
39	same as 35
40	Green blinking
41	Yellowish gree blinking
42	Greenish-yellow blinking
43	Yellow blinking
44	same as 40
45	same as 41
46	same as 42
47	same as 43
48	same as 32
49	same as 33
50	same as 34
51	same as 35
52	same as 36
53	same as 37
54	same as 38
55	same as 39
56	same as 40
57	same as 41
58	same as 42
59	same as 43
60	same as 44
61	same as 45
62	same as 46
63	same as 47
64	same as 0
65	same as 1
…