Free MIDI DIY Projects

GroupDIY Audio Forum

Help Support GroupDIY Audio Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
I wish they had used Atmel uC's. Interesting detail with uCApps is that the core board can be programmed with MIDI SYSEX dumps. So you compile the source code, convert it to MIDI SYSEX format and send to the core module via MIDI.
 
yes! there is another great DiY support community there as well.. http://midibox.org
I'm in the process of building a midi controller, and needed something like 64 pots/switches on it and was going to go the Doepfer pocket electronics route, but that was going to be like $400 just for four of their boards which each only handle 16 inputs.
The midibox stuff is expandable, opensource, and more capable than the Doepfers for far less cash.
some of the designs on the midibox site are top notch. :grin:

cheers~
-Jay
 
I built this project a few months ago. It came out pretty cheap for the number of knobs and features you get... about $100.

http://www.fivefish.net/diy/MidiLC/default.asp

Check out the video clip showing this cardboard-housed midi controller working in Sonar.

I still haven't built a case for it.
 
[quote author="owel"]I built this project a few months ago. It came out pretty cheap for the number of knobs and features you get... about $100.

http://www.fivefish.net/diy/MidiLC/default.asp

Check out the video clip showing this cardboard-housed midi controller working in Sonar.

I still haven't built a case for it.[/quote]

nice pics! And useful with the detail, I'll be checking this out wen it's time for me to wire. I'm not this far along yet with my wiring, but I've designed the control panel and now I'm waiting on a custom aluminum enclosure from par-metal. What do you have in mind for your case?


-J
 
I'm thinking aluminum face panel, with wood panel siding for that retro-moog look.... and wrist pad towards the front. I'd like it having an angled slope.

Does par-metal custom cut aluminum sheet to size? I found another online store that will sell custom cut sheets to whatever size you prefer.
 
[quote author="owel"]I'm thinking aluminum face panel, with wood panel siding for that retro-moog look.... and wrist pad towards the front. I'd like it having an angled slope.

Does par-metal custom cut aluminum sheet to size?  I found another online store that will sell custom cut sheets to whatever size you prefer.[/quote]

oh man i love the wood side idea.  : )   I went with a 19" rackmount, so a sloped look is out for me, at least in the 1st design.   At some point I'd like to make a motorfader controller for Logic, and this would be in the angled slope style.
I had a custom design done from Par-metal for the enclosure, but the cost was twice as much as just getting what they stock and working with that.
What company did you find for the aluminum sheets?   I've found a place that offers aircraft DiY parts which offers such stuff, here:
http://www.aircraftspruce.com/menus/me/aluminum.html


anyway, for what it's worth this is what I have so far with my top panel:
http://analogaccess.com/pics_pics/MIDIbox-hybrid-controller-2006

the little controller board in the pic is the Doepfer pocket electronics, which is not going to be part of the project now that I found the MIDIbox.org.
:grin:

[2010 updated webserver/url]
cheers~
Jay
 
Wow. That looks tasty! Nice bright orange too. I like it. It looks very pro. (Puts my cardboard panel to shame, hahaha)

I got a few questions.

1. Where did you find those rubber pads? What circuit/project are you using it for ? Is it velocity sensitive?

2. How much did par-metal charge?

http://www.onlinemetals.com/ was the site I found.
 
[quote author="owel"]Wow. That looks tasty! Nice bright orange too. I like it. It looks very pro. (Puts my cardboard panel to shame, hahaha)

I got a few questions.

1. Where did you find those rubber pads? What circuit/project are you using it for ? Is it velocity sensitive?

2. How much did par-metal charge?

http://www.onlinemetals.com/ was the site I found.[/quote]

thanks for the link!

those rubber pads were part of an old AKAI midi drum pad that i had laying about. my idea is to integrate them into the center of my controller to be used for triggering sounds. They sit on top of a metal platform that has a layer of pad sensors. The sensors create various amounts of resistance depending upon how hard they are hit. I still have to work out how to make this work with the midibox controller since they are in the Megaohm range which presumably is too big for the midibox decoder.
Maybe a breadboard and some parallel resistors per pad wire will do the trick.

Par-metal didn't do the panel for me- these guys did:
http://www.frontpanelexpress.com/

I have Par-metal working on the bottom enclosure for the controller, and it is going to cost me like $135.00. Expensive compared to their off the shelf stuff, but not so bad considering how much something with allot less metal, such as an external hard disk enclosure, run in the computer server/workstation world!


-Jay
 
:grin:
nice one!
Try to stay with LED backlights :grin: ! Looks much better and is going to serve you a lifetime (and no inverter involved...)
The PC modding people have alot different colours in stock normally. :grin: :grin:
I already built a SID and have a functional SEQ (without encoders for now, but they are already waiting for beeing hooked up.
Fun platform.

Kind regards

Martin
 
>Try to stay with LED backlights

Well, hindsight is 20/20 :)

The LCD I got for like $4.95 apiece. And the high voltage inverter for around $6-7 to power the EL panel.

But next time, I'll pick LCD panels with LED backlights.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top