Midihub with Norns Shield

Midihub Support
1

Hi everyone! I’ve been using the Midihub in my setup for a year now and it’s been fantastic.
Now I’m looking to get a Monome Norns Shield. The thing is, it doesn’t have traditional MIDI ports, only USB, which it uses to send MIDI. The device is based on a Raspberry Pi 4.

Could you please tell me if it’s possible to connect the Blokas Midihub to the Norns Shield and send MIDI from Norns to other devices through the Midihub?

The idea is to generate MIDI on the Norns and distribute it to other MIDI hardware via the Midihub.
The Norns Shield acts as a USB MIDI host.

2

I haven’t used Norns, but I expect it should see Midihub as 4 input and 4 output MIDI device, the data sent to Midihub will appear at “FROM USB X” and whatever is sent to “TO USB X” should be received in Norns. It would be odd for Norns not to support multiport devices. :slight_smile:

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3

I have Norns Shield and a MidiHub. Oddly enough I’ve never connected the 2. I’m confident it will work fine, but I’ll try to test tomorrow and report back

4

Two things: First, I recommend getting the ShieldXL, it is the nicest hardware in my opinion. For your use case, note it also has TRS midi you can use.

Second, for connecting MIDI (or audio) over USB, look into a Norns script called Connecto.

Good luck!

5

As expected, MidiHub shows up as an available device on my Norns (actually a ShieldXL, totally agree with @square_wave that it is the best DIY version of Norns). Actually 4 devices Midihub MH-XXXXXXXX 1 thru 4. Accessing the editor would be the only piece that would kinda suck. It would require unplugging and connecting to a computer to make changes to any of your presets.

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I’ve been meaning to try this for a while, having both a Norns shield and a spare midihub.
Hence, watching this thread with interest :slight_smile:

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@jasonbirchler many thank you for checking the connection!
I actually wanted to buy shieldxl for the price of a regular shield, but it was taken from under my nose…usually it costs 30% more. so I decided to try the small one for now, and it looks like it will be friendly with midihub).
thanks again!