Remote Yamaha 01V mixer

The Yamaha 01V mixer has a handy serial port on the back called "to Host". It allows you to connect a PC to the mixer using a standard Comm port and remotely control it.

So my friend Geoff had this brilliant idea to use a Wi-Fi comm port box to allow him to put the 01V next to the stage at an event and wirelessly control it with his laptop while sitting in the audience.

Problem is, there doesn't seem to be any details anywhere of the commands to do this. The 01V manual briefly describes the commands but no information on all the different parameters available.

There is a nice program available called "C-console", but it only works over MIDI rather than using comm ports, and also the manufacturer C-Mexx appears to have vanished, making it impossible to get hold of a legit copy of the software. A demo version which runs for 1 hour is available on the net so we decided to use this for help finding out the commands.

 

So, we had 2 approaches to try:

1-Run a driver to provide virtual MIDI ports, which then map to the wifi comm port, and use C console to run it.

2-Write our own application to control the mixer.

By experimenting with C-console we found out a lot of stuff about controlling the 01V which does not seem to be documented anywhere, so I will document it here for posterity and any other unfortunate soul who is trying to work it out.

To be continued...