This is the last of four articles about adding a "parasitic" microcontroller to the WowWee Elvis Alive that allows control of this device from an external PC via a serial interface. This article covers the use of MIDI sequencer software (Multitrack Studio) to create animations for the modified Elvis Alive which I am now calling "PC Elvis". Any MIDI sequencer that supports audio clips can be used for this purpose but I have selected the Multitrack Studio sequencer because it has all the capabilities needed for this application and it is has a limited free demo which can still be used for this purpose. The MIDI events output by the sequencer are routed using a freeware program (Hubi's Loopback Cable) into my custom application (PC_Elvis.exe) which turns the events into motor control commands that are sent to the PC Elvis bust over a RS-232 interface.

Software Installation

All the PC Elvis software is provided in the single zip file PC_Elvis.zip. Links to this file and the Hubi's Loopback Cable and Multitrack Studio software were provided in the previous article (part 3). The installation steps below should be done in the order given.

-  Install Hubi's Loopback Cable Version 1.51

-  Install Multitrack Studio Version 5.0 or later.

-  Start Multitrack Studio

-  Click on the "Song" button at the top left and create a empty song and save it to create the song directory.

-  Click on the "Studio" button at the top left and select "Devices". 

-  From the Devices pop-up window click on "Properties".

-  Change "MIDI In Device" to "None" and "MIDI Out Devices" (1) to be "LoopBe Internal MIDI". Then exit the Devices window.

-  Click on the "Studio" button again and select "Preferences". In the "Transport-stopped Options" box turn off "Play MIDI notes being edited".        

-  Now exit Multitrack Studio

-  Extract the PC_Elvis.zip files.

-  Copy the files PC_Elvis.exe and MxMidi32.dll to your My Documents directory or to any directory that has write privileges for your user name.

-  Create a short cut to the PC_Elvis.exe file and drag this to your Desktop for easy access.

-  Copy the directory FatB to the C:\Documents and Settings\Your User Name\MultitrackStudio Songs\ directory created in the step above when you saved the empty song.

-  Copy the file PCElvis.pmp to the C:\Program Files\MtStudio\Patchmaps directory

-  Start Multitrack studio again and from the "Song" button select the "FatB" song directory and then select the "FatB.hdr" file and open it.

-  Start PC_Elvis using the icon you created.

-  From the PC_Elvis window check under the settings menu that the COM port number is correct for your serial port. It defaults to COM1.

-  The baud rate defaults to 19200 so this rate is correct unless you have changed it in the microcontroller software. The correct COM port number and baud rate will be saved in a file and re-read each time you restart PC_Elvis.

-  From the PC_Elvis menus check that the input device is "LoopBe Internal MIDI". It will always default to this as long as you have no MIDI interface installed.

-  Adjust the application windows so that Multitrack Studio is the top half of the screen and PC_Elvis is the lower half.

-  Using the transport buttons (top right of Multitrack Studio) click on the green arrow and you should see a trace of the MIDI note events in hex appear on the PC_Elvis screen. Once the time slider at the top reaches the end of the 22 second song you will need to press the stop transport button. The actual motor commands sent to the Elvis bust out the serial port are in brackets [] in the PC_Elvis window following each MIDI event shown in hex. If you are seeing the events and commands in the PC_Elvis window you can now minimize this window and maximize the Multitrack Studio window.

-  If you did not see the events in the PC_Elvis window then you will need to check that your MIDI input setting on the PC_Elvis window is "LoopBe Internal MIDI" and the MIDI output setting for Multitrack Studio are the same.

With the serial and audio cables plugged into your PC from the Elvis bust you are ready to playback the "Fat Elvis" demo. If you do not see any movement you will need to check your COM port assignment and your Elvis Number assignment from a terminal program. The Elvis number should be set to 9 and this is what the default value is in the delivered hex file. If your PC_Elvis program is crashing on an unhandled error, the problem is most probably with the serial port being used by another process or the COM port number selected is not present on your computer.  You can find the freebee program "Process Explorer" on the internet to find any process that might already be using the serial port.

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