MC8 Pro, Bluetooth, and CME Widi

Morningstar Gear MC Pro Series MIDI Controller
1

I know many threads deal with this topic because I have read them all in trying to get my setup to work. I did not really care about Bluetooth when I bought the MC8 Pro. I was simply upgrading from my MC6 Pro. I like more buttons, the displays are great, and they are crystal clear. I am using the MC8 Pro with a pair of amps and rack that holds the switcher for the heads and five pedals, one of which is an UAFX pedal, the Del-Verb.

When UAD upgraded the firmware with midi capabilities, I wanted to take advantage of the new functions. My MC8 Pro is on the floor, so far away from the rack. I nicely have one midi cable from the rack to MC8 Pro, which is what I like. In other words, I really can’t run a USB cable from the MC8 Pro host port to the UAFX pedal. This is where WIDI enters the picture.

I thought I could use the MC8 Pro built in blue tooth with one WIDI Uhost to communicate with the MC8 Pro. I did get it to work once for about five minutes, but it was a laborious process. You essentially have to turn off Bluetooth on everything anywhere near the Uhost, and if you had connected the Uhost to the WIDI iOS app, you have to go into Bluetooth settings to forget it. You start the MC8 Pro first, then plug in the Uhost to its power supply and the pedal. Since the only BLE device around is the MC8 Pro, it will pair with it and the Uhost light will turn turquoise. I was able to sent midi commands to the pedal. Great. After a few minutes, it stopped working because as I powered up other Bluetooth gear, it dropped the connection with the MC8 Pro.

Here is where a big catch-22 happens. The way you get the Uhost to pair only with the equipment you want is to set it to “Force peripheral.” However, if you do this, the Uhost broadcasts it is available for pairing, but it is waiting for a WIDI Master to find it. The problem is you cannot set the MC8 Pro as the WIDI Master. It can only be a peripheral. You can’t set it to Master in the WIDI App because the MC8 Pro is not discoverable by the WIDI App. You can only set other WIDI devices as peripherals, which means you need at least two Uhost to make that work. Once you set one WIDI Uhost as master, it can accept BLE from the MC8 Pro. But there is a catch here as well. If you are trying to communicate with more than one pedal through the Master Uhost, the peripheral units cannot talk to each other.

There is a solution. If you have only one pedal you need to communicate with, then just attach one Uhost to the host port on the MC8 Pro and connect the other one to the pedal that accepts USB midi. They will automatically pair and set themselves to Master and peripheral. I have been using this setup for a few days now, and it is flawless.

I like it so much that I am going to get another UAFX pedal and a third Uhost. In this case I will set the Uhost connected to the MC8 Pro as Master and the other two as peripherals.

While I am not really using the MC8 Pro BLE, it does not bother me. I still have the MC8 Pro BLE available to pair with the editor either on my iPad or computer.

I am posting this because I spend hours with this project, and if it helps anyone else save some time that will be good.

Also, if anyone has figured out how to get around the limitations I outlined, I would love to hear about it.

Finally, the MC8 Pro is a great piece of kit.

2

Forget the MC8 Pro BT and use another WIDI device connected to it instead if you want to use BT LE connectivity in your rig.

3

Thanks for the reply. That is exactly the conclusion I came to. I was making the post to consolidate some other post to save someone else time.

As I said, using one WIDI Uhost with the MC8 Pro and one on the pedal works flawlessly.

4

Same conclusion here.

Don’t use the MC8Pro bluetooth if you have more than one bluetooth devices to connect to.

Use CME widi devices to connect them : configure and forget, it works flawlessly!

5

Since I made my original post, I added a second UAFX pedal and a third WIDI Uhost. I used the WIDI iOS app to configure the three Uhosts as a group. Set the Uhost connected to MC8 Pro as Central, and once you do that, the other devices automatically get put in the peripheral slots. Saved the group to the Central Uhost and reconnected the Uhosts to the MC8 Pro and pedals. Started everything up and it works flawlessly, every time.

I use the MC8 Pro Bluetooth to connect with the editor.

6

Good summary, thank you!

7

Maybe this is so obvious that you didn’t mention it, but it is important to save your pairings on the central device.

I suggest using the “Group Auto-learn” setting in the WIDI app. With all devices except the central one turned off, set “Group Auto-learn” to “On,” then disengage the computer/tablet’s BT.

Then turn on your peripheral devices one by one and let them connect (up to 4 peripheral devices can connect, as I recall) to the central device. Once all are paired (turquoise indicator), press the button on the central device to save the settings. You won’t get stray pairings if you do it this way.

Be aware that if your BT device isn’t a WIDI device, it can’t function as a central device.

I may be using WIDI devices a little differently to others so let me know if this is off base!

8

Saving the group settings when you create a group with the WIDI App is a little different. Once you create the group in the app, you download the group settings to the Central Uhost. When you download the group settings to the Central Uhost , the Central Uhost automatically saves settings. I mentioned that in my post as saving the settings to the Central Uhost, but specifically you download the group settings, which automatically saves them.

I find doing all the work in the app first easier. You power on all the Uhosts you will use. In my case, three. The WIDI App will ask to pair with each of them. Once you pair with the Uhost, rename each of them and choose forced peripherals. For the Uhost that will be central, you choose group settings and drag its name into the central slot. The other WIDI Uhosts will automatically move to the peripheral slots. Download the groups settings to the Uhost. Turn off the WIDI hosts and unpair them from the iPad. Just connect the central unit to the MC8 Pro and the other two to the pedals, and when everything powers up, it will all pair correctly and work flawlessly.

9

I agree that Morningstar’s BLE implementation is outdated. The MC8 Pro should function as a controller, not a peripheral, there’s simply no technical justification for the current approach.

Today, most IoT and advanced wireless devices, including telescopes and audio equipment, use BLE merely to connect to a WiFi hub. Most people have WiFi access, and modern touring rigs are compact and affordable. Hundreds of devices on the market implement this topology successfully with zero-lag audio performance.

Morningstar’s resistance to this architecture is puzzling. The technology is cheaper to implement by orders of magnitude, yet they lag significantly behind the curve. When I spoke with one of their technicians, they cited latency and signal dropout concerns, arguments that may have held weight a decade ago but don’t apply today. Even companies like CME (even though CME implementation of purely BLE is also head scratching into today’s world) you can get a dedicated router the size of a cigarette packet sending 5 or 6g @ 20gbs vs BLE measly 2mbs signal, take a company like ZWO they have moved well beyond this limitation.

ZWO, for instance, transmits highly precise data with strict timing tolerances and zero-lag performance, proving the technical feasibility in a box only 2 inches long. I can only imagine designers in the music industry just don’t mix with other industries to see what is possible it’s a shame, if the excuse is we don’t know how to transmit midi over 5g that simply doesn’t stack up in today’s world.

Python already have midi over TCP/IP and a small Raspberry Pi with a Midi Connector connected to the right pins could easily setup to transmit over Wi-Fi off the shelf less than $40. and Raspberry Pi Stacks are tiny.