Blackbox MIDI

[miha]

And it's yellow!
The keyboard player from my band started using VSTs for different synth and organ sounds, so I decided to make a MIDI controller to control the basic parameters such as volume, reverb etc. The original idea was to make a huge board with many pots and switches, but I decided to go for a simple version first, to see how it works. It's Arduino-based and I pretty much designed the circuit as the project progressed, I'm pretty happy overall. The top-right toggle is meant to be a bank switch, so you can control additional parameters with the pots and switches and the bottom switch is a weird momentary toggle that I bought accidentally, but thought it's pretty cool so it ended up on this thing.

some pics:



cheers!

[Addy Bart]

Nice work! I dig those colours as well.
Have you seen the SparkFun Wav Trigger? It's a good alternative to using a laptop for keyboard sounds.

https://www.sparkfun.com/products/13660

[miha]

Thanks! Interesting idea, but I guess you'd have to load a bunch of layers of samples on it to get a nice velocity curve?

[Addy Bart]

As in multisampling of the same note at different volumes? I don't think it's capable of that but it is velocity sensitive. Cool for single layer mellotron sounds, organs etc.

[sturgeo]

Nice project, I like the mini/micro/nano boards for projects like this, is the jack for an external footswitch?
I've got a midi controller in the works as well, pro micro & some I2C expanders hooked up to 24 RGB LEDs, 30 footswitches and a 20x4 LCD. Its good how scalable these units are until you have to start using external EEPROMs and have issues with page writes & buffer limit sizes...

[drolo]

That's really cool :-)
Did you program the midi in the arduino yourself?
Care to share some details with your arduinoob friends in here ?:-D

[miha]

Addy Bart, yes that is pretty much what I meant, that two parameters (which note and velocity) control which sample would get used. In my mind that is pretty much a must if you want to use some piano/rhodes sounds or you lose the nuances in playing.

sturgeo, I think it's really cool that you can have an idea and go from zero to finished in a couple of days and still have the capability to tweak and add stuff just by changing the code. And yes, the jack is for an external footswitch. My first idea was to use a Mega board and a ton of features, but the main problem was the enclosure, because I wanted slider pots, which cause a lot of problems when drilling. I'll probably get to it some day and use a 3D printer for the enclosure. Your project sounds really cool, I'd like to see that, when it's done!

Drolo, yes I did the programming myself, but am not done yet. Basically what the program does is it reads the pins and if there's a change in value it sends a message to the serial port (USB). At first I wanted to use the MIDI library, but it just didn't work. So I went and studied the standard MIDI documentation and used the commands described there for sending the messages. So if you know how to read inputs on an arduino you are one step away from making a controller like this I can send you the basic code with comments if you are interested. Also, check out this thread http://www.madbeanpedals.com/forum/index.php?topic=24631.0

[drolo]

Thanks Miha!
I am more than miles away from being able to do what you described, just generally curious
I think for my own health I should better not embark in another rabbit hole or I can say bye bye to sleep :-D

[miha]

If you can make and tweak patches on the FV-1, you could do this blindfolded while having a fish sandwich and a cup of tea

[drolo]

You just don't know how many fish sandwiches I had to eat before I could get anything going on the FV1 ...

[stringsthings]

Did someone mention a fish sandwich?  Me luvs 'em! 

[bluescage]

Looks very interesting!