My Experiences with Yamaha's Midi Bluetooth MD-BT01 and UD-BT01 with Windows 10

[jblyth]

I have been recently trying out  Yamaha's Bluetooth MD-BT01 and UD-BT01 devices with my Tyros 4, and below is a summary of what I discovered after much testing and no little confusion!

• Of prime importance is your operating system. These units are primary designed to work with Apple products, BUT, they will work with Windows 10 if you have the latest version and your hardware is compatible. I have the very latest Surface Book 2, but I can't vouch for lower levels of hardware, although frozzers on this link http://www.psrtutorial.com/forum/index.php/topic,43741.0.html has it working well!
• The first issue is that the Tyros range has two sets of midi in and outs - A and B. This is rather important as it affects how these devices work significantly.
• The two Bluetooth devices only seem to work natively with software that will access midi over Bluetooth. My current version of Notation Composer and the good old SendMidi utility failed to detect the Bluetooth midi port but there is a solution, if somewhat messy- see below

I had no problems connecting either unit via Bluetooth to my Laptop, but I did discover that even though my Nexus 9 Tablet did connect and pair, none of my Android midi capable software, including MobileSheets, sensed the midi port. So at this stage it would seem they cannot be used with Android devices until the software can sense the port correctly. I would be interested if anyone else has been able to get their unit to work with Android!

The benefit of the midi port pluggable MD-BT01 is that it can be used with either midi port A or B by plugging it into your desired location. It is also gets it power from the keyboard.

However the UD-BT01 required a non-supplied USB charger for its power. It seemed to me that even though it then plugs via a USB cable into the USB-to-Host port, it only provides access to Midi Port A, and not Midi Port B, which could be a limitation. In my case I wanted access to Midi Port B for use in changing Registrations via MobileSheets, so I have it plugged into Midi B. The UD-BT01 could only do that if I changed the keyboard's midi settings, which then impacted on other things I wished to do.

It is possible to use both devices with Windows software which don't sense the Bluetooth midi device. You will need two free programs to get it to work. MIDIberry from the Microsoft Store and LoopMidi.exe from https://www.tobias-erichsen.de/software/loopmidi.html . LoopMidi creates a virtual midi port which older software can use, and then MIDIberry routes the midi data from the virtual port to your Yamaha Bluetooth Midi device. It's a bit messy but it does work.

I would be very interested in any other users experiences with these device, and particularly if they have got them working with an Android device.....