Arduino MIDIUSB Volume & Expression

[finnmitdoppeln]

Hej, I followed this great thread as it was evolving but it lasted just until now that I wanted to start a built of a MIDI controller myself. I’m new to all this arduino stuff but am I right that I could use just about any arduino (equivalent) board that contains the ATmega32u4 and has the same amount of inputs as the pro micro or at least as many as I want to use in my project?
Thanks in advance!

[malfunction54]

Hi @finnmitdoppeln There is a more current discussion about DIY MIDI Controllers. Maybe that would be of interest?

[Simon]

@finnmitdoppeln

… am I right that I could use just about any arduino (equivalent) board that contains the ATmega32u4 …

Yes

[finnmitdoppeln]

Thanks @malfunction54 I had a look over there too but wanted to stick with this easy tutorial. And thank you @Simon again!

[tomapter]

Hi @Simon thank you for this tutorial, I’ve been trying to do this kind of adapter for a few weeks now.

I’m really new to the arduino world so sorry if my questions are obvious, but I only have an Arduino uno for now, can it work with a shield like the ProtoShield, on which I would solder the stereo femal jacks ?

And I don’t understand how you would connect the whole thing to the mod device. Is it through the control chain port ? Do we have to solder an RJ45 port as well then ?

Thanks for your help and sorry again if the questions are not appropriate

[Simon]

This project does not use the Control Chain so no need for an RJ45 connector or an Arduino “Shield”.

Unfortunately, the Arduino UNO is not native USB Compliant so it cannot be used for this project.

This is why the Arduino board I used is the Arduino Pro Micro because it is USB compliant (see link in my PDF).

What does USB Compliant mean ? Well, it means the Pro Micro can be recognized as a regular USB device when connected to a computer, like a keyboard, a mouse printer etc…

So, you guessed it, the way you connect this project to a Mod Dwarf, Mod Duo, or Mod Duo X is with a USB cable between the Arduino and the USB Host port on the device. You could use this project with a regular computer and music software as well. I used it on a Mac mini with Apple’s Main Stage app..

It would be possible to convert to or add a hardware MIDI 5 pins DIN connector but the Arduino programming would need to be modified and I wanted to keep the soldering to a minimum for this tutorial.

[tomapter]

I see, I’ll get a Arduino Pro Micro and follow the PDF. Thanks for the explanation !

[Simon]

Unless you already saw it, you can to see what my Volume Pedal looks like in this thread:

MIDI Volume Pedal

I wanted to be able to control the volume out of the Dwarf with a pedal. For this, I used an analog Ernie Ball I had and put it right after the Dwarf and before the amp (or main board) in my signal chain. But, that analog volume pedal seemed to filter or damper the signal which forced me to set a higher output level than I whished out of the Dwarf. So, I decided it was time for a MIDI volume pedal I used an Arduino Micro with the code I made available on this forum in the past…

[DaveM]

Just to throw another option in; you could also send MIDI over a MIDI cable instead of USB. But you do need some power supply then. That’s how I modded a volume pedal I had lying around. In that case you can use any Arduino. But I chose an Arduino Nano because that way I could put all the electronics in the pedal case.

[DaveM]

And a tip; if you use the pitch bend CC you have a bigger resolution to work with.

I connected a separate ADC board to the Arduino to use the full potentionial of these extra bits. From memory, it was this one.