Firmware-72
The USB-microDig is a thumb-sized hardware device that encodes analog voltage signals, such as generated by sensors, to music industry compliant MIDI messages with high resolution.
The USB-microDig also includes 8 digital outputs that can be used to control actuators using the top (4th) row on the sensor input connector. Use any of our many free software tools, such as the iCube and oCube Max/MSP plugins, to interface the USB-microDig to your software application.
The firmware of the USB-microDig enables it to operate in both stand-alone mode (sensor data is processed before it is transmitted) as well as host mode (raw sensor data is transmitted). Stand-alone mode includes various sensor processing and mapping features such as gesture recognition that can be conveniently configured using our free editor.
To communicate with the USB-microDig you need to connect its USB cable to your computer and install the supplied driver available for download from our web site (Windows or MacOS). You can then establish a connection with the USB-microDig by using our free Connect or BlueMIDI application or use the virtual COM port (VCP) with your own application (such as the serial object in Max/MSP). If you are using the VCP the COM port setting of the USB-microDig is 115200 bps, no parity, 1 stop bit, 8 data bits, hardware data flow control enabled.
The USB-microDig is self powered and provides 5V power to the connected sensors/actuators. It is registered as a device that uses 300mA, so if the maximum allowed current has been exceeded for the USB hub where the USB-microDig is connected you might get a system message on your computer warning you about this or the hub will simply shut the power off. In this case you will need to get a powered hub so that it can provide sufficient current to the USB-microDig. The USB-microDig is compliant with the USB v2.0 specification and uses the full-speed (12Mbps) transfer rate.
In this documentation the communication protocol used by the USB-microDig is based on the MIDI protocol. Despite the fact that the USB-microDig has a different baud rate, uses a serial port and has no MIDI cables, you can use it as a MIDI device by running our free serial port to MIDI bridging software that makes the serial port data available at a MIDI port on the computer. This way you can use any MIDI application to communicate with the USB-microDig. The “MIDI input” and “MIDI output” expressions used in this document therefore refer to a communication setup as established between the USB-microDig and the computer running our serial-MIDI bridging software. You can turn it into a stand-alone MIDI (output-only) device by using our USB-microMIDICable.
This document describes the I-CubeX USB-microDig communication protocol v7.2. The MIDI implementation version number is the same as the firmware version number and can be obtained by sending a DUMP VERSION command to the USB-microDig. If your USB-microDig’s firmware is older than v7.2 you can most likely upgrade it to v7.2 using our software, freely available from our website.
This specification is divided into general, stand-alone mode and dual mode sections addressing programming commands as understood by the USB-microDig and transmitted messages as sent by the USB-microDig.
