Can Silverlight communicate with a MIDI instrument?

Question

Can Silverlight communicate with a MIDI instrument connected to the machine running the Silverlight application? In- or out-browser.

Answer 1

It appears that this is not possible in Silverlight. To communicate with a MIDI device, you would have to PInvoke methods in winmm.dll, and this (apparently) cannot be done in Silverlight. See:

http://forums.silverlight.net/forums/t/123673.aspx

This could be done easily in a WPF or WinForms application. It could also be done in a browser with XBAP, although you would need elevated permissions to access the winmm API, which would require a certificate. You can also still make ActiveX controls with .Net, but I think you would still need a certificate for this to get the proper permissions (although it might work with just a scary security confirmation dialog).