Bonsaipanda skins for MPC Live plugins in standalone

Over at GS, user Bonsaipanda has been tooling around with switching out the skins for the standalone plugins and Air effects. Check out what he's done so far - some of these look pretty bad ass, IMHO:

And a video of one skin in action:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBnchFYy_Ps




Threads where he posted it:

https://www.gearslutz.com/board/showpos ... ount=23500

https://www.gearslutz.com/board/showpos ... ount=23514

Very rad!

Interesting... must be doing something interesting with data on the internal memory card.

Looks dope

NearTao wrote:Interesting... must be doing something interesting with data on the internal memory card.

Yeah, I'm not sure what his "brute force" method is in getting access to the Live's internal MPC Documents folder. As he says:

The AKAI MPC Live and AKAI Force boast a pretty impressive customization system, where you can paint your own effects, upload them to the MPC Documents / Force Documents folder and they will appear in place of the factory skins. However, this feature is not yet complete and only the placeholders for the folders remain.

The feature does apparently work in the Force but the MPC Live required a cumbersome and somewhat brute force method of installation, which I'm not that happy about. I might need to poke around and try to understand the folder structure better but from what I saw it seems that this feature is not yet finished on the Live.

The MPC stand alone app might just be an image that gets mounted, so it *could* be possible to drop in different data. From reading the posts about hacking on the MPC though it read like a real mess to do this kind of thing to me though...

meep meep!

Yes, the method for uploading custom skins is officially called "do-not-attempt-unless-you-are-prepared-to-brick-your-mpc". It is possible to take the original firmware image, unpack it, swap the custom skins into their place, repack the image and then upload it into the MPC but I still wouldn't let a regular user do that. The method I used was to SSH directly into the OS and just FTP the files over.

I poked Dan a bit and asked if the feature is finished on the MPC Live, but he's a busy beaver. IF it works like I suspect it should work, users could put their own custom skins into _any_ "MPC Documents/Plugin Skins" folder - even on the SD card - and it would load up on the screen.

It's a pretty cool system and it doesn't look like it was meant only for in-house (or partner) use.

Also, here's a sneak peek of the Juno -style theme running on the MPC Live, this was the first page successfully ported over (and seems to be working fine, not sure yet) >>

Cool work man!

Have you gotten a way to keep an ssh server open upon reboot? Having to keep mucking with it upon reboot I shrugged at it a year or two back, but if it is possible to make this a boot option I’d be more inclined to hack on it myself.

NearTao wrote:Cool work man!

Have you gotten a way to keep an ssh server open upon reboot? Having to keep mucking with it upon reboot I shrugged at it a year or two back, but if it is possible to make this a boot option I’d be more inclined to hack on it myself.

Cheers. o/

Yes. I am using a custom made firmware that has a pre-installed SSH running, so the pipe is open immediately after boot >> https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

The whole toolset is available here >> https://github.com/TheKikGen/MPC-LiveXplore/

If you are squeamish about installing a firmware from an untrusted source (as you should be), there is a python script that enables you to do it offline as well.

Bonsaipanda wrote:Also, here's a sneak peek of the Juno -style theme running on the MPC Live, this was the first page successfully ported over (and seems to be working fine, not sure yet) >>

That is FREAKING BAD ASS! And while the vacuum tube is totally not on any Juno is does look pretty cool. I hope Dan and company make this sort of customization a real thing. I seriously think they should partner with you, as well. Your skins are top notch, and much cooler than what we have from Akai, IMHO.

Would this work on the ONE as well?

EnochLight wrote:That is FREAKING BAD ASS! And while the vacuum tube is totally not on any Juno is does look pretty cool. I hope Dan and company make this sort of customization a real thing. I seriously think they should partner with you, as well. Your skins are top notch, and much cooler than what we have from Akai, IMHO.

Thanks so much! Drawing all that stuff is stupid fun, porting it over without a proper editor ... not so much.

I'm hoping it will come a thing as well and they share the customization tools they have so anyone can make their own.

64hz wrote:Would this work on the ONE as well?

99% sure that yes, it would.