Proposing idea to fix the MX-1 USB Problem

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M1R5080
Posts: 4
Joined: 12:17, 3 December 2016

Proposing idea to fix the MX-1 USB Problem

Post by M1R5080 »

Problem: The unit only talks to select Roland equipment on the USB which limits the usable channels by how much compatible gear you own.

Solution: Use an arduino type board, such as the beagleboard or Intel Galileo, that can provide USB client connections, we need to pretend to be a compatible device. Attach a midi and audio shield, all we really need to do is pass midi and get audio from our guest non-compatible device and pass that audio to the MX-1 over USB.

Explanation: I believe the MX-1 probably has only a few routines for how to handle how the USB packet messages were written, and probably has only a couple of USB device addresses stored in the firmware. All the Aira gear probably uses the same USB Packet Message formats, and other companies products don't pass the packets with the information in the right places. So the MX-1 doesn't understand where to parse out the audio and midi data in these packets. Roland had to release a firmware update to the MX-1 to be able to support the System-8, Which is Aira gear. So if they are following the same messaging protocols, shouldn't that be compatible? Perhaps it could be that the firmware update contained only the USB Device ID's for the System-8 and it needs this information to properly address the packet data. Either way if you could provide all the proper handshaking, packet message structure and audio formats you could in theory trick the MX-1 into thinking that it is connected, to say a system 8, but you are actually passing audio from anything.

Caveat: If there is any type of driver handshake, driver signing, or looking at some data that was signed by an encrypted key at the Roland factory then you probably cannot talk to these ports with anything but Roland devices that had these restrictions built in. However it would seem that this is probably not the case, because the MX-1 connects to some non Aira devices currently, and this functionality probably wasn't thought to be a problem at the time those devices were created.

The Biggest Problem (How you can Help): I have no idea, and I cannot find this information anywhere, the structure of the communication between the USB port of the Aira Device and the MX-1. It could be possible to snoop on the packets as they are in transit from the AIRA gear and MX-1 and then see what information is being sent and then try to replicate that. There is at least some chance that the USB packets have some weird goofy Roland checksum stuff, like they added to their Midi messages, and this would require at least some extra time to figure out. The best way to figure this stuff out is through collaboration, so if anyone has some information on this it would be much appreciated. Additionally wire shark now has a tool to capture raw USB data, called USBPcap. If people with these Aira devices could capture and post the raw USB data at least I could see how these devices are trying to communicate with the computer. If there is no difference in connection and message structure between the computer and the MX-1 then I can perhaps more easily be able to send this data to the MX-1 and get this working.
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