I have a MIDI controller going through Max into an mxj object which allows the controller to act as a "meta-controller" -- for example, allowing me to switch MIDI channels or have higher level control over CCs. All of the above is in Java without the Processing libraries, developed in Eclipse.

I want to visualize what I'm controlling using a Processing window, so I wrote a PApplet that does that. There are two difficulties I'm having:

- Is there a 'right way' of giving the PApplet a reference to my meta-controller object, so it can visualize it? Right now, instead of saying:

Code:

PApplet.main(new String[]{"MyApplet"}); 

I say:

Code:

MyApplet applet = new MyApplet(metaController); 

And then call a method that acts like PApplet.main() to setup the window and whatnot. (If PApplet.main() returned PApplet, I would have used that and passed the metaController via a separate method -- it'd be great if the meat of main() was in another method that returned the PApplet, and main() simply called that method).

- The way I have is working for now, except: if I close the Java window before closing Max, CPU usage goes to 99% for Max and it takes a few minutes to stop the Max process. Also, if I close the patch alone, the Java window remains. Do I need to stop() the sketch before closing the window? Any ideas?

I'm very familiar with maxlink and other UDP solutions to Max + Processing communication, but it wouldn't be right for this project -- it would be unwieldy to send all the visualization information across the subnet.

Don't know if you already got this working, but I managed to get Processing running in Max today, via mxj.

First, I made an mxj wrapper for the Max "box":

Code:

package kompose;

import processing.core.*;
import com.cycling74.max.*;

public class Kompose_GUI extends MaxObject
  {
  GUILoader gui;
  public Kompose_GUI()
    {
   declareInlets(new int[]{DataTypes.ALL});
   declareOutlets(new int[]{DataTypes.ALL});

   declareIO(1,4);

   gui = new GUILoader();
   }
 }
  

Then I created a loader for the Processing window, based on the "Embedded" example from the processing.core docs:

Code:

package kompose;

import java.awt.BorderLayout;
import java.awt.Frame;
import processing.core.*;

public class GUILoader extends Frame
  {
  public GUILoader()
  {
  setLayout(new BorderLayout());
  setSize(1024, 712);
  setVisible(true);
  PApplet embed = new Main();
  add(embed, BorderLayout.CENTER);
  embed.init();
  }
}
 

Seems pretty good, though tryng to hide/show it with setVisible() causes Max some serious anxiety! Hope this helps.

cheers,

J.

Well, now that I've got Processing loded into Max via mxj, I need to actually communicate with it. Everything I can find online is suggesting that, once I have the applet (or PApplet, in this case), I should be able to call the public methods of that applet/PApplet. But I can only call public methods of PApplet, not my sketch's PApplet, which obviously extends PApplet. So... I'm confused.

Any light to be shed?

J.

jbmaxwell -- did you have any difficulties with closing Max vs. closing your patch vs. closing the Processing window? If not, I'll go your route. I will be revisiting this issue within the next week for another project and it'd be nice to have a "clean" solution.