A MIDI frontend for the LumiDeck — see the OpenLamp umbrella) engine: drive your smart lamps (and, soon, anything else) from Ableton, Bome, Logic, or any cheap physical MIDI controller — and from the Stream Deck via its MIDI plugin.
This repo is the top layer of a stack. It references the others:
| Layer | Repo | Role |
|---|---|---|
| core | Beennnn/lumideck — see the OpenLamp umbrella) → core/ |
standardized LED interface + OpenLamp State (OLS) contract + engine |
| streamdeck | Beennnn/lumideck — see the OpenLamp umbrella) → streamdeck/ |
Elgato Stream Deck plugin |
| midi | this repo | MIDI → OLS overlay |
The overlay never talks to a device directly. It opens a virtual MIDI port
LumiDeck, translates incoming MIDI into OLS commands, and calls the engine's
local API (http://127.0.0.1:8377/cmd). The engine (from the core) owns the
persistent device connections, so MIDI-triggered changes are as instant as a key
press — and stay in sync with the Stream Deck.
Controlling lamps over MIDI is not a Stream Deck feature (the Stream Deck plugin drives the engine directly). This overlay targets the MIDI musician community — people who already own physical MIDI controllers and want to fire lamp colors from them, live on stage. See ENCAPSULATION.md.
MIDI is the cheapest, most ubiquitous physical control layer: €20-80 pads, faders and footswitches, real-time, recognized by every OS and DAW, no drivers. This overlay turns any of them — or a Stream Deck — into a lamp/show controller.
- One MIDI channel per lamp group (channels map in
mapping.json). - Notes → colors/power/animations, CC → brightness/temperature/continuous hue, Program Change → scenes/presets/snapshots, MIDI clock → tempo.
- Full mapping and coverage matrix: MIDI-PROTOCOL.md.
The lamp bridge is one instance of a general pattern: MIDI → any local backend (Home Assistant, DMX/Art-Net, OSC, MQTT, Shelly…), so one cheap controller drives your whole show and home. See ENCAPSULATION.md.
pip install python-rtmidi # only dependency
python3 lumideck_midi.py # opens the virtual "LumiDeck" MIDI portRoute your DAW/controller output to LumiDeck. Autostart via
com.benlab.openlamp-midi.plist (launchd). The LumiDeck engine (Stream Deck
plugin from the core repo) must be running.
Built by BenLab with the help of Claude (Anthropic). Part of the LumiDeck project. Not affiliated with Tuya, Elgato, the WLED project, or any MIDI vendor.
Any controller your Mac sees as a MIDI device works out of the box — route it to
the LumiDeck virtual port (directly, or through your DAW). Typical stage picks:
- Foot controllers (hands stay on your instrument): Hotone Ampero Control
(4 footswitches, ~80 EUR), Morningstar MC6/MC8, Behringer FCB1010 (10 switches
- 2 expression pedals, the classic). Map switches to blackout / restore / scene recalls per song section.
- Pads: Novation Launchpad Mini, Akai APC mini (~80-100 EUR) — one pad per color per group; the 8x8 grid maps naturally to 8 colors x channels.
- Faders/knobs: Korg nanoKONTROL2 (~60 EUR) — hue / saturation / brightness on three faders (CC 3/4/1) = paint any color live with one hand.
- Keys: any MIDI keyboard — notes 60-67 are the color palette; velocity is ignored, so nothing fires by accident while playing softly... on another channel.
- Multi-FX pedals that send MIDI: Hotone Ampero II Stomp, Line 6 HX Stomp — a patch change on your guitar board can also switch the stage color.
- From the DAW: Ableton Live clips (one MIDI track per lamp-group channel), or MIDI clock for tempo-synced pulses.
No drivers, no config on the controller side: it just sends notes/CC — the
mapping lives in mapping.json on the computer.
This overlay talks to the engine's local API (/cmd on 127.0.0.1:8377) served by
openlamp-engine — either its headless
daemon (no Stream Deck needed: run-headless.sh) or the
lumideck plugin. Run ONE host at a time.
Family map: openlamp.