thank you! i've been trying for AGES to get Pd to communicate via sysex with my korg microkontrol and didn't realise sysexin / midiout would work.

One problem I encountered, however, was that not every piece of software and hardware recognises the decimal-formatted sysex output from Pd. Midi Monitor recognises it, for example, but Sysex Librarian doesn't, and neither does my microKontrol.

As a workaround, I'm routing the sysex output from Pd into a Max patch which contains a midiin object connected directly to a midiout: although the sysex data isn't being changed in any way, when it's sent out by Max it's recognised by all my software and hardware (including the microkontrol). It's a bit of a hack, but is relatively straightforward and means that i now have full in/out sysex functionality from Pd.

possibly an obvious question, but have you tried upping the baud rate of the serial connection?

i had the same problem with my arduino midi controller: i found using [average] and [change] objects helped smooth out the noise on the analogue inputs and solves the problem with values jittering and jumping.

if you're after the current date, and are using OSX, then you can use the "shell" object to send commands to the Terminal, and receive information back... this includes date & time information. in fact, if you open up the help for "shell", there's an example of how to do exactly that.

or do you mean that Pd doesn't understand numbers divided by / symbols?

the best way to learn how to use the monome's OSC capabilities is to download the PD OSC howto from the monome site: it's a really useful overview of what you need to set up to send OSC messages to & from the 40h:

http://docs.monome.org/doku.php?id=howto

second to last on the list above!

also, i built a patch routing OSC messages from my 64 to various MIDI notes and CC sliders, for controlling Ableton Live. If you have any questions then feel totally free to send them my way and i'll see if i can help out...