Hi all,

I'm getting increasigly tempted to get a monome. However it'd be for a
somehow exotic platform, i.e. the GP2x. The GP2x (
http://http://www.gp2x.co.uk/ ) is a portable game console running some
stripped version of an ARM-based linux kernel.I'm doing a tracker for it
and controlling it externally from a monome is pretty exciting. Any
expert advice with respect to getting the driver to work there ? It's
FTDI based right ? Is there any compilable drivers for it ?

Thanks,
Marc.

i thought tehn said the FTDI is built into the linux kernel, no?  or 
just uilt into some linux distros, maybe?  regardless, if you can get 
the driver up and running, the rest should be pretty easy.  you can go 
all out and work directly with the FTDI .dll (or whatever it would be on 
linux), or better yet see if there is any higher level serial APIs you 
could use.  does linux consider serial ports a file like Windows?  im 
thinking yes due to the whole "everything is a file in Unix" thing.  In 
Windows, serial programming in C++ is not too hard for the monome, the 
tricky thing is handling the threading (and GUI, ive been slowly trying 
to make my MonomeSerial for Windows in C++), although im sure you know 
all this stuff as a programmer already.

im interested in seeing what you come up with, please post back here 
with any info, id love to be able to give you any help i can.

Try out this website, this might be a good place to get started:

http://mccormick.cx/projects/gp2xPd/page/install

I've been trying to get this to work for the last hour I think, but 
can't for some odd reason.  I'm using firmware 3.0.0 on the gp2x, and 
wonder if this is the issue since it is a pretty new firmware.  I can't 
get the python port to work out, so the Pd won't work out in turn.  I'm 
sure its something very stupid i'm doing wrong.  but, such is life when 
working with the gp2x in my experience.

also, to power the 40h through the USB you might want to get the gp2x 
cradle that is out now.  or else, the batteries will be eaten up in no 
time without an external power supply.  the batteries already go by too 
quickly.

hope this helps.  i'm not sure about the FTDI driver built into this 
kernel or not.  the new firmware for the gp2x was made to support 
external USB devices (to coincide with the new cradle that came out with 
4 USB ports), but I'm thinking these are driver-less HIDs.

whoa this could be super interesting… i have always been interested in 
gp2x for autonomous music development. hvent slurged and bought one yet 
tho… kind of an expensive toy if i dont know what im gonna do with it :)

After digging a little, there are indeed drivers for ftdi available with 
linux distro but they are not build in the lightweight kernel of the 
GP2x. We can however get them to compile and do an insmod with them. 
I'll give a try with a dumb ftdi device before I can think aquiering a 
monome, because I need to be able to integrate it in my GP2x tracker, 
otherwise it's be pretty useless to me. The combination monome+gp2x is 
quite appealing to drive it's sequencer live. I'll report more when I 
got more information.

For anyone interested in portable sequencing using the 2x, check out the 
tracker that I'm developping:

<http://www.10pm.org/nostromo/lgpt>

The GP2x is a *very* nice machine with quite a bit of power, nice dev 
tools and a fairely good sound quality (especially with respect to it's 
size).

Thanks for the answers,
Marc.

I was also pondering about buying a GP2x in order to use it for live 
performances. Are you planning to port serialio/monomeserial to GP2x 
natively?