Arduino Nano 33 BLE - USBMIDI Device

GiGiUK · February 19, 2021, 12:07am

Hi everyone, this is my first post so I will try to make it a clear one, here goes

Ive been designing a midi controller for a while now. I`ve experimented with the Teensy 3.2 and Teensy 3.5 which make it quite straightforward to use MIDIUSB, however I wanted to have Bluetooth in my project and a way of writing apps to control the midi device and it doesn't seem possible with the Teensy platform.

I came across the Arduino Nano 33 BLE which at first seemed to be a good solution and it is supposed to be USBMIDI compatible. Well I've tried everything I can think of but I just cant get my PC (WIN 10) to see the Nano 33 BLE as a USBMIDI device.

There seems to be several different midi libraries floating around the net with no real clarity on which one to use, I've tried several with no luck.

The code I am using for my application works fine with the Teensy, so I wont over complicate things by adding it here. The problem appears to be library related I think and Im guessing there is no library that supports the Arduino Nano 33 BLE currently.

To be clear, I'm not currently trying use the Bluetooth, just MIDI over USB at the moment!

Ive tried using both of theses header files:

#include <usbmidi.h>
#include <MIDIUSB.h>

and also the following code for the Control-Surface library:

// Include the library
#include <Control_Surface.h>

// Instantiate a MIDI Interface to use
USBMIDI_Interface midi;

However, nothing allows my Nano 33 BLE to show as a USBMIDI device.

I checked the Device Manager (see pic) but nothing showing.

I'm stumped, if anyone could offer me a little support, it would be great.

thanks
Ged.

Device Manager.jpg

PieterP · February 19, 2021, 12:32am

USB MIDI support for the Nano 33 BLE was only added to Control Surface very recently (February 8th), and it has not yet been merged into the master branch, so you'll have to install the new-input branch for now.

There seem to be some issues with the underlying USB stack, probably data races in the Arm mbed os or Nordic USB code. It seems to affect the serial communication as well. I have opened an issue with the ArduinoCore-mbed repository, but I haven't received any responses from the Arduino team

github.com/arduino/ArduinoCore-mbed

Nano 33 BLE unreliable USB communication

opened 02:03AM - 07 Feb 21 UTC

tttapa

nrf52

Hi, I'm working on a USB MIDI library using the `PluggableUSBModule` class. D…uring my tests I've had sporadic failures due to the received USB packets reporting an incorrect length (the number returned by `read_finish()` is often incorrect). I've printed the packet lengths I get in the USB callback on the Arduino and compared them to the lengths of the packets sent by my computer (using Wireshark), and the received sizes are often incorrect. It's most noticeable at the end of a transmission, where the packet size is less than the maximum size. The strange thing is that the second to last packet often reports the same length as the last packet. For example, when sending 196 bytes in total, the packet sizes are `64, 64, 64, 4`, but the reported sizes on the Arduino are sometimes `64, 64, 4, 4`. The standard Arduino USB `Serial` port seems to exhibit similar issues. When using simple loop-back code (see below) and sending long strings in the serial monitor, the response is truncated at seemingly random points and sometimes characters are missing in the middle as well. ```cpp void setup() { Serial.begin(115200); } void loop() { int r = Serial.read(); if (r >= 0) Serial.write((uint8_t)r); } ``` Challenge: ``` 01234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789 ``` Responses (scroll to the right): ``` 0123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345 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I suspect this is some kind of timing issue or a data race in the low-level USB code. I've verified my own code by simulating it in a multi-threaded desktop C++ program and running it using ThreadSanitizer. I'm reasonably confident that it is correct and race-free, and I've tried just wrapping everything in my code that even remotely interacts with variables used in USB callbacks in a critical section to make sure it doesn't race with my code, but the problem persists. If it's useful, I'll clean up my code and push it to GitHub. I did some digging into the ArduinoCore-mbed source files and I realize that the root cause probably lies buried somewhere in the Nordic-specific Mbed OS USB code, but since it also affects the Arduino Core, I decided to first open an issue here. I hope someone who's familiar with Arduino Mbed port could maybe point me to the right resources. I searched for issues in the ARM Mbed OS repository, and found these two: https://github.com/ARMmbed/mbed-os/issues/11912 & https://github.com/ARMmbed/mbed-os/issues/10862, but although they do mention problems with critical sections in the USB code, I don't know how relevant they are to this issue. I've been stuck on this problem for about a week now, and I don't know how to proceed. At this point, it seems impossible to reliably receive multiple packets worth of data over USB, neither using `Serial`, nor using MIDI.

Sending MIDI seems to work fine, but the receiving code sometimes gets the wrong USB packet size, which means that some bytes get lost. I believe this is not something I can fix without help from someone who has experience with the Nordic USB hardware and firmware.

Pieter

GiGiUK · February 19, 2021, 1:00am

Hi PieterP, thanks for the quick reply.

I followed your link, installed the new library and I tried to upload the Note-LED sketch onto my Nano 33 BLE. However, it wasn't successful but I'm not sure why.

I've attached the compile error file for you to have a look at.

thanks again
Ged.

P.S. If you help me to solve this, ill be adding you to my Christmas card list....

ErrorMsg.txt (301 KB)

PieterP · February 19, 2021, 1:04am

Ah, right, this is pins_arduino.h macros unavailable during library discovery phase · Issue #124 · arduino/ArduinoCore-mbed · GitHub. You can fix it by editing your ~/.arduino15/packages/arduino/hardware/mbed/1.3.2/cores/arduino/Arduino.h file to ignore the ARDUINO_LIB_DISCOVERY_PHASE macro:

  20   │ #if ARDUINO_LIBRARY_DISCOVERY_PHASE == 1
  21   │ #define ARDUINO_LIB_DISCOVERY_PHASE
  22   │ #endif
  23   │ #if !defined(Arduino_h)
  24   │ // && !defined(ARDUINO_LIB_DISCOVERY_PHASE)    <--- This line
  25   │ #define Arduino_h
  26   │ 
  27   │ #if defined(__cplusplus)
  28   │ #if !defined(ARDUINO_AS_MBED_LIBRARY)

GiGiUK · February 19, 2021, 12:53pm

Hi PieterP

That seems to have done it, I'm really happy, thankyou, I would have never of figured it out on my own....

Just one last thing, you wouldn't happen to know why I keep getting this line:

Invalid library found in C:\Program Files (x86)\Arduino\libraries\libraries: no headers files (.h) found in C:\Program Files (x86)\Arduino\libraries\libraries

Cant thank you enough...
Ged.

PieterP · February 19, 2021, 1:15pm

The correct library folder structure is C:\Program Files (x86)\Arduino\libraries\Control-Surface, not C:\Program Files (x86)\Arduino\libraries\libraries\Control-Surface. See https://www.arduino.cc/en/Guide/Libraries.

system · June 19, 2021, 1:16pm

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Arduino Nano 33 BLE - USBMIDI Device

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