In this Senstroke tutorial, we will show you how to use Senstroke sensors on Linux with Hydrogen on your computer.
Recap : the Senstroke technology
The sensors connect via Bluetooth to a smartphone, tablet or computer.
Once the drum kit is defined by the user, the sensors allow you to play the drum anywhere and on any surface.
You can emulate drum sounds from any application or DAW (Digital audio workstation) software that accepts MIDI via Bluetooth such as Cubase, Logic Pro, etc.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to connect your Senstroke sensors to Hydrogen on Linux.
We would like to thanks senstefo from our Redison forum. He entirely wrote this tutorial, it is always great to see original content from our most dedicated users !
User experience: intermediate.
Packages required (and their dependencies) : hydrogen qjackctl chromium (optional)
Pre-requisites
- External USB Audio Device/ Sound Card (recommended); alternatively, you can use your internal sound card adding your user to the realtime group (see https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/JACK_Audio_Connection_Kit#Installation).
- Pre-config your drumkit with the Senstroke App on other system if neccesary.
Connecting and pairing the Senstroke sensors on Linux
Turn on your bluethooth device.
Turn on your Senstroke sensors.
Connect all of them and select “Trust device”. You should see now the green light on.
If you are having issues here, try following the tutorial for Windows 10 published here and using chromium + https://flexiblemidi.netlify.com/
Setting up the Senstrokes with JACK and connecting to Hydrogen on Linux
Run QJackCtl
Setup as follows, selecting the proper sound card (external or internal):
Click on ‘Start’ to initiate the JACK server.
Run hydrogen
Configure as follows:
Go back to QJackCtl and open the “Graph” dialog.
Perform the connections from each of the Senstroke to the Input of Hydrogen:
Go back to Hydrogen and check the Midi input is blinking every time you execute a hit on your Senstroke sensors:
You are all set!
The default Hydrogen drumkit should work out of the box.
If you change it, you should re-order the sounds (Kick, Snare, Hat…) to match with the default.
How to disconnect the Senstroke sensors from Linux
Just turn off the Bluetooth on your device and then turn off each Senstroke sensor.
Redison Forum
We would like to thanks again senstefo who wrote this tutorial on our Redison Forum.
You can read it here and thank him directly if you want !
Feel free to ask for tutorials on our Forum if you need, it will be a pleasure to write down what you need.
You can also find all our tutorials to connect Senstroke sensors to a DAW software !
And don’t forget, keep on drumming !
The Redison team.
