Excerpt of Novation Launchpad programmers reference

Launchpad Programmers reference

Along with the first shipment of launchpads going out, Novation released the programmers reference, a document that shows exactly how the Launchpad works with midi.

12 pages of a programmers dream as the PDF really explains the detailed inner workings of the Launchpad. Not only that but they have gone out of their way to put it in easy to understand terms. The release of this document is sure to set developers a light with ideas of creating open source apps and software. You can download the PDF from their site. Some interesting notes are that the Launchpad uses a slightly slower USB connection to transfer data.

Learn from your competitors mistakes

I must admit I get the feeling Novation are learning from Akai’s mistakes as Akai didn’t release any midi documentation or give away any hints as to how the APC40 handles midi. Akai didn’t even release a driver, you don’t need one but the APC40 and windows users are having a few niggling problems that a dedicated driver would fix, the launchpad has it’s own driver

Akai holding back has not stopped open source apps such as the monomulatorbeing released but it does slow development down. So this is a call for Akai to release the midi information. That said they will only tell you to wait for Max for live to come out and then buy it to completely manipulate the APC40. These are luxuries not everyone can afford.

Conclusion

With this release I’m expecting to see some open source apps and software popping up very soon. Probably some max/msp patches too. Seems like Novation are trying to align themselves with the open source community and maybe  trying to make the launchpad a poor mans monome. For now it’s too early to tell but the future is looking bright for the launchpad and the button matrix controller as a whole.

Zander

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