In addition to receiving OSC and working with it using Time State, we can also send out OSC messages in time with our music (just like we can send out MIDI messages in time with our music). We just need to know which IP address and port we’re sending to. Let’s give it a try:
use_osc "localhost", 4560
osc "/hello/world"If you run the code above, you’ll notice that Sonic Pi is sending itself an OSC message! This is because we set the IP address to the current machine and the port to the default OSC in port. This is essentially the same as posting a letter to yourself - the OSC packet is created, leaves Sonic Pi, gets to the network stack of the operating system which then routes the packed back to Sonic Pi and then it’s received as a standard OSC message and is visible in the cue logger as the incoming message /osc:127.0.0.1:4560/hello/world. (Notice how Sonic Pi automatically prefixes all incoming OSC messages with /osc and then the hostname and port of the sender.)
Of course, sending OSC messages to ourselves may be fun but it’s not that useful. The real benefit starts when we send messages to other programs:
use_osc "localhost", 123456
osc "/hello/world"In this case we’re assuming there’s another program on the same machine listening to port 123456. If there is, then it will receive a "/hello/world OSC message with which it can do what it wants.
If our program is running on another machine, we need to know its IP address which we use instead of "localhost":
use_osc "192.168.10.23", 123456
osc "/hello/world"Now we can send OSC messages to any device reachable to us via our local networks and even the internet!