Anyone build and used Cabbage on Raspberry Pi?

severak · 10 November 2020 12:27

I have new project - synthesiser built out of surplus Raspberry Pi. It’s simple - I just took old RasPi, my USB MIDI keyboard, an cheap LCD display and rotary encoder and few wires and put it together. I used my old Cabbage plugins and just wrapped it by some Python code, which just let me to tweak synth parameters by knob and display them on LCD screen. Not finished yet but already works great.

I am thinking one step further. If RasPi has HDMI output and my plugins already have GUI, why not have an option to use GUI instead of hardware knob if user prefers it? Unfortunately I have very little experience with building C++ projects so I am asking if somebody already solved this.

Also - it seems that you need VST2 SDK which seems to be unavailable now (except some stolen copies). Do I need this to built when I am gonna use it in standalone mode anyway?

Technical details on my project later. Now just some hardware photos:

rorywalsh · 10 November 2020 14:52

No you don’t need the VST2 SDK if you are not going to be using plugins. But you will need to make come changes to the Cabbage build files. Clone the Cabbage repo and update to the latest Csound. Then edit the buildCababge script by taking out these lines.

github.com

rorywalsh/cabbage/blob/develop/Builds/LinuxMakefile/buildCabbage#L45-L83


../../../JUCE/extras/Projucer/Builds/LinuxMakefile/build/Projucer --resave ../../CabbagePluginNoStandalone.jucer
mv Makefile MakePluginEffect
echo "$(tput bold)Building PluginEffect…$(tput sgr0)"


make -f MakePluginEffect clean CONFIG=Release
make -f MakePluginEffect -j6 CONFIG=Release
cp ./build/CabbagePlugin.so ./install/bin/CabbagePluginEffect.so


../../../JUCE/extras/Projucer/Builds/LinuxMakefile/build/Projucer --resave ../../CabbagePluginSynth.jucer
mv Makefile MakePluginSynth
echo "$(tput bold)Building PluginSynth…$(tput sgr0)"


make -f MakePluginSynth clean CONFIG=Release
make -f MakePluginSynth -j6 CONFIG=Release
cp ./build/CabbagePlugin.so ./install/bin/CabbagePluginSynth.so


../../../JUCE/extras/Projucer/Builds/LinuxMakefile/build/Projucer --resave ../../CabbageLite.jucer
mv Makefile MakeCabbageLite
echo "$(tput bold)Building CabbageLite…$(tput sgr0)"

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Then try to build. It will fail. Let me know when you get that far and I can talk you through the rest

zappfinger · 20 November 2020 14:49

How did you wrap the plugins and the Python code?

severak · 20 November 2020 15:13

It’s done via python-ctcsound package.

Sound generation is done by CSound. But its parameters are changed by python script, which uses input from knob and display parameter values on LCD screen.

See source code https://tildegit.org/severak/guinea-synth

Video demo will came later.

zappfinger · 20 November 2020 15:52

Ok, but you are also using some Cabbage plugins and some additional csd’s? I am trying to see the overall picture.
BTW, you can also use PySimpleGUI for a Python GUI (in stead of Tkinter)
And where do you need C++ for?

severak · 20 November 2020 16:25

Basically I reuse my old plugins created with Cabbage and have new frontend for them - RaspberryPi-based hardware synth (based on python script mentioned earlier).

(Tkinter is used just for development of hardware-based synth on Windows)

The overall idea is to use Raspberry in both ways:

as hardware compoment without any monitor, mouse, etc (just with LCD display, one knob and USB MIDI controller)
as host for Cabbage-based GUI (this is why I asked for Cabbage build for Raspberry)

The great thing is, that CSD file can act both as hardware machine and VST plugin.