Use the USB cable instead of WIFI with Liine’s Lemur

This is a tip for those of you who bought the Wifi version of the iPad and try to use that on stage with the Lemur app from Liine. I guess you at least once been in the middle of a gig when you realize you lost contact with your computer and whatever you try to do with your music it is just not happening. If you’re a loop based techno artist you probably sort it out but if everything that the audience hear comes from your touch on the iPad it will be a more or less embarrassing moment that you could do without. I wanted to be able to use the USB cable that came with the iPad to emulate a network card and use that to transfer both OSC and MIDI, I thought it would be possible straight out of the box but the rotten Apple thought different. But after some research I realized it was doable. So… Screw Apple, let’s jailbreak that sucker and do it anyways (and your warranty are now void).

It’s pretty easy but I can’t do a detailed walk through since the jailbreak process are different for every version of iOS and the setup needed between your iPad and your computer will differ depending what software you’re using. But Jailbreak tutorials are pretty easy to find and you just have to install one app via Cydia (Cydia is a control app that’ll be on your iPad after you done your jailbreak)

• Jailbreak you iPad (c’mon, it’s actually as easy as playing Angry Birds, you download a program on your computer, push a button and wait)
• Get the app MyWi in Cydia (I think it’s about $19 so this one is not free, but cheap and well worth it)
• Connect your iPad to your computer with the USB cable and activate USB Tethering in the MyWi app
• Your computer will start to install a new (virtual) network card
• When it’s done you can set your new emulated network card as you need and start playing. No more hassle with shaky AD-HOC WIFI thingies.

Note
On my first attempt I had to restart the iPad on one or two occasions but on the second iPad everything worked right away.

If you have a iPad with both WIFI and cellular you should be able to use any USB tethering app from the APP store to achieve the same thing without jailbreak. 

There are other alternatives to get a cable born network or MIDI but they all cost more and are bulky. This is the most elegant way I found and it’ll also charge your iPad while on stage. Big bonus.