Using Bluetooth MIDI on the Raspberry Pi Target

There are several wireless MIDI devices available that you can use with RNBO on the Raspberry Pi. This article uses the Korg NanoKontrol studio 1 to demonstrate the steps to configure bluetooth MIDI.

1. ssh into your RPi using Terminal or PuTTY

$ ssh pi@c74rpi.local

2. use bluetoothctl to discover your BT MIDI device

pi@c74rpi:~ $ bluetoothctl

3. Turn on your bluetooth MIDI device and enable discovery mode. Note: for the Korg, this is just pushing the switch all the way right

4. Turn on the bluetooth agent, if not already enabled

[bluetooth]# agent on

5. Scan for devices

[bluetooth]# scan on

Discovery started
[CHG] Controller DC:A6:26:4B:D3:52 Discovering: yes
[NEW] Device 48:EB:62:DA:CD:C4 nanoKEY Studio

6. Take note of the MAC address of your device, then just use the pair command to pair with it:

[bluetooth]# pair 48:EB:62:DA:CD:C4

Request authorization
[agent] Accept pairing (yes/no):

7. type yes - then use the trust command to automatically pair the device whenever they’re in range together

[nanoKEY Studio]# trust 48:EB:62:DA:CD:C4