Use MIDI signals for media control

In the comments, dirkt suggested to write a custom program. So, I wrote a short working proof of concept script in Python that reads inputs from a MIDI controller and then simulates the required key press. I tested it on Ubuntu 20.04. Unfortunately, it requires superuser privileges to run, otherwise /dev/uinput cannot be opened for writing.

import mido
from evdev import uinput, ecodes as e


def press_playpause(): 
    """Simulate pressing the "play" key"""
    with uinput.UInput() as ui: 
      ui.write(e.EV_KEY, e.KEY_PLAY, 1)
      ui.syn() 


def clear_event_queue(inport):
    """Recent events are stacked up in the event queue 
    and read when opening the port. Avoid processing these
    by clearing the queue.
    """
    while inport.receive(block=False) is not None:
        pass


device_name = mido.get_input_names()[0]  # you may change this line
print("Device name:", device_name)

MIDI_CODE_PLAY = 115
MIDI_VALUE_ON = 127

with mido.open_input(name=device_name) as inport: 
    clear_event_queue(inport)
    print("Waiting for MIDI events...")
    for msg in inport:
        print(msg)
        if (hasattr(msg, "value") 
                and msg.value == MIDI_VALUE_ON
                and hasattr(msg, "control")
                and msg.control == MIDI_CODE_PLAY):
            press_playpause()

Requirements:

• evdev
• mido
• python-rtmidi
• python-uinput