Helgobox App

A complement to the Helgobox Plug-In which provides a modern user interface. It runs embedded in REAPER or as a separate program that connects to REAPER. Mobile versions for iOS and Android are planned.

You can run the app in two ways: Embedded or Remote

Embedded mode

Each Helgobox instance can display its own Helgobox App window, directly embedded into REAPER:

  1. Open the Helgobox Plug-In

  2. Press Menu  Show App

Embedded mode is the recommended way to run the app, offering seamless integration with REAPER.

Remote mode

There’s an additional way to use the app: To run it as a separate program that connects with REAPER over a network connection.

Use cases

Running the app in remote mode opens up interesting possibilities.

Crash protection

You can start the app on the same machine, but outside of REAPER. If it crashes for some reason, only the app itself will crash. REAPER and the Helgobox Plug-In will continue running. It’s similar to running plug-ins in REAPER in bridged mode. This could be interesting for live scenarios.

Additional views

You can open additional app windows on the same machine and connect them to the same Instance. This gives you multiple views on the same instance.

Performance optimization

You can run the app on an extra computer and connect it to REAPER on the main machine. This way, you can be sure that the app doesn’t take any valuable processing power away from REAPER and the Helgobox Plug-In.

Touch screen operation

Maybe your main machine is a powerful Mac mini standing somewhere further away from you. You could take a Windows tablet (and in the future an iOS or Android tablet) and run the app there, connecting to your main machine.

How to do it

Starting the server

To allow connections to Helgobox from computers in the same network, you need to start the Helgobox Server.

  1. Open the Helgobox Plug-In

  2. Press Menu  Server  Enable and start!

This needs to be done only once.

Starting the app

Just like the plug-in, the app is part of the Helgobox installation and is located in your REAPER resource directory:

  1. Open the Helgobox Plug-In

  2. Press Menu  Server  Open app folder

  3. Start the executable:

    Windows

    helgobox.exe
    macOS

    helgobox
    Linux

    helgobox

By default, the app connects to the Helgobox Plug-In running on the same machine. You can change this by running the app with command line arguments.

Copying the app directory somewhere else

You may copy the app directory to another location or even to another computer. However, you should renew your copy whenever you update Helgobox! An update often contains both a new version of the Helgobox Plug-In and a new version of the Helgobox App.

If you connect the app to a plug-in and the versions don’t match, you will see the following error message:

Host API version doesn’t match