Sometimes, a device may wish to know what other devices are connected to it. For example, a Patch Editor software running on a computer may wish to know what devices are connected to the computer's MIDI port, so that the software can configure itself to accept dumps from those devices.
The Identity Request Universal Sysex message can be sent by the Patch Editor software. When this message is received by some device connected to the computer, that device will respond by sending an Identity Reply Universal Sysex message back to the computer. The Patch Editor can then examine the information in the Identity Reply message to determine what make and model device is connected to the computer. Each device that understands the Identity Request will reply with its own Identity Reply message.
Here is the Identity Request message:
0xF0 SysEx
0x7E Non-Realtime
0x7F The SysEx channel. Could be from 0x00 to 0x7F.
Here we set it to "disregard channel".
0x06 Sub-ID -- General Information
0x01 Sub-ID2 -- Identity Request
0xF7 End of SysEx
Here is the Identity Reply message:
0xF0 SysEx
0x7E Non-Realtime
0x7F The SysEx channel. Could be from 0x00 to 0x7F.
Here we set it to "disregard channel".
0x06 Sub-ID -- General Information
0x02 Sub-ID2 -- Identity Reply
0xID Manufacturer's ID
0xf1 The f1 and f2 bytes make up the family code. Each
0xf2 manufacturer assigns different family codes to his products.
0xp1 The p1 and p2 bytes make up the model number. Each
0xp2 manufacturer assigns different model numbers to his products.
0xv1 The v1, v2, v3 and v4 bytes make up the version number.
0xv2
0xv3
0xv4
0xF7 End of SysEx