Network tool for OSC monitoring

OSC
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Gig Performer has OSC support and that’s very nice!
Starting to work with OSC often necessitates to monitor OSC messages like Gig Performer can do it for MIDI messages using its builtin MIDI monitor. Reading the GP forum, different software for OSC monitoring can be identified, among them:

The above list is a summary from GP forum posts from @pianopaul, @simon & @dhj.

Regarding OSC monitoring, I also wanted to share my experience of using a cross platform network packet analyzer for this purpose, namely Wireshark: https://www.wireshark.org/

I already knew Wireshark, but I didn’t immediatly came to the idea that Wireshark could “know” about the OSC protocol, and good news, it does :+1:

The advantage of using Wireshark for OSC monitoring is that it can monitor all the OSC devices at the same time without having to change anything to the IP adressing of your network. Here is an exemple of the Wireshark main window when monitoring an OSC communication between an RME audio interface and GP:

Wireshark_OSC_display
Wireshark_OSC_display1920×1080 443 KB

Wireshark offers many option to filter the display. Here I simply had:
osc.message.header && (udp.dstport==7000 || udp.dstport==9000)
but I guess you imagine that it is quite simple to do much more.

The column titles speak from themselves and you can even determine if the OSC messages are packed in an OSC bundle or not. Here are the corresponding columns settings:

Wireshark_column_preferences
Wireshark_column_preferences1723×500 118 KB

To make the OSC messages list even more readable you can customized the displayed colors. Here I changed the colors according to the UDP destination port :

Wireshark_coloring_rules
Wireshark_coloring_rules1303×287 80.8 KB

So, also think of testing Wireshark for OSC monitoring, especially if you work with Windows and therefore cannot use OSCulator.:wink:

7 Likes
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I wanted to give a big shout out to David-san for pointing me to Wireshark. I have been using it for several weeks and it is my OSC Monitor of choice for Windows 10. Thanks for going the extra step and showing how to configure to easily filter the desired traffic, and to color code so I know what messages come from GP and what come from Lemur. Outstanding! :clap:

1 Like
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Thanks @robert-m-hussey for the kind words. :wink:

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Hello !
Reviving the subject,
I would be very interested in checking OSC messages from Wireshark, I’m seeing OSC in the protocol list in the preference panel, but my sent OSC messages are not detected as such in the log…
I’ve also checked “Try heuristic sub-dissector first” in the UDP protocol settings.
The OSC protocol settings only contain “OSC TCP Port”, which for me doesn’t make much sense as OSC is mainly used with UDP.
Is there anything to setup before being able to see the messages ?
Thank you

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Wireshark is overkill unless you think here is a problem with your underlying network.

Try OSCShark, that’s what I use.

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Sorry for the late reply on this, @benkuper.

Wireshark is great, but oddly its default setting is to disable OSC UDP. This is easily addressed by clicking “Analyze → Enabled protocols…” and then scrolling down the list until you find OSC. When you click on OSC to expand it, there’s “osc_udp” underneath and you need to check that. It’s unchecked by default.

I forget about this every time I install it on a new machine and it’s at least half an hour of thinking “ok, what’s wrong here…” before I remember how to fix it.

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Oh great ! thank you very much !

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Try OSCShark…designed explicitly for OSC, much easier to deal with than wireshark

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I haven’t seen a version of OSCShark available for download that’s already compiled for Windows.

I started using Wireshark before I entertained the idea of compiling anything on Windows, so I’ve never bothered trying to compile OSCShark.

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The Mac download on the GitHub site no longer works either.

I assume this is a fork, as it looks the same: OSC Data Monitor and has a Windows executable. I’ve used the Mac version.

1 Like
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Protokol from Hexler should be added to this list - it runs on multiple platforms.

https://hexler.net/protokol

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Interesting: SENDOSCF - Windows command line tool for sending out OSC messages. → LINK

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Seems SENDOSCF has some hard restrictions on the format of the osc messages sent. Initially it was designed for sending float values to set volumes on a Fireface. Messages using other value types (integer, string) are denoted as “untested” and indeed do not seem to work properly.

But another command line tool sendosc seems to do a good job!

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I also got in contact with hexlar.net and asked if they are planning/willing to provide a command line version of “protokol”