I’m discovering the world of mod-audio and I’m very impressed. To introduce myself, I have 25 years of professional experience in software and hardware development. I’ve been working in IoT for about ten years. So, to continue in the mod-audio universe, I’d like to install all of this on a Raspberry Pi 5. I saw a simple way to do it through the Patchbox project. I plan to test that. I’m thinking of adding footswitches via the Raspberry Pi’s GPIOs. Am I dreaming, or is this feasible? I’ve already spent several hours skimming through the different projects, but it’s very dense; I haven’t yet definitively understood whether I should communicate with mod-host or mod-ui. I also saw that there are several ways to communicate: serial, websocket, etc., and again, I don’t know where to start.
Finally, one last question: I took a look at the design of the mod-dwarf. I was wondering if making it an audio HAT for Raspberry Pi wouldn’t be a good idea?
Thanks in advance for your comments, and congratulations again to all the contributors to this project!
Hello there!
I have it on a pi4 with raspberryOS directly and compile the mod software step by step ( made a script ) and compile the plugins or get them from patchstorage.
Modep is probably fine, but I like to keep up to date with upstream mod directly.
I use piSound audio hat and archive really low roundtrip latency, around 3ms.
Sounds like you are going to have fun!
Never tried switches since I always use midi controllers but with your background it’s kinda trivial to hook into a gpio and write a bit of code
Hello, I just finished my project with a Raspberry Pi 3B+ equipped with a HiFiBerry HAT, an Arduino, and some audio circuits (splitter + blender). It took me 5 months, but now everything works in stand-alone mode—no need for an internet connection or anything else.
Personally, I find the 3B+ might be a bit underpowered in terms of processing and latency, but since I’m only doing delay and reverb with no dry signal, it’s fine.
I communicate via serial between the Arduino and the Raspberry Pi, then convert it to a MIDI signal using ttymidi. I felt like the Raspberry Pi didn’t have enough GPIOs for my taste.
I have recently had a similar idea. The PiSound + RPi5 thing seems like the best way to go, and comes with some tools (like the one button thing) that helps you set things up. Footswitches should be simple with GPIO and then just assigning functions, but I’ve never done this.
I’d also be interested in the comparison between CPU specs in the RPi5 vs the Dwarf. Basically I’d want to create my own Dwarf - rather pointless since I have one, but also nerdy and fun.
Keep us posted on anything you do, so I can maybe copy you when I have the funds to blow.
Step 1 is complete. Raspberry 5 + patchbox. I’ve connected footswitches to the GPIO. I’ve developed a Python script to retrieve GPIO events and translate them into MIDI messages. It supports single, double, and long clicks, allowing these messages to be used for different pedal settings. I’m designing a printed enclosure to integrate footswitches, the raspberry pi and my small PCB with multiplexer to retrieve GPIO events.
In the end, since the codec CS4265 was end-of-life and it was therefore hard to produce, I redesigned it around a more recent codec (the CS4272). I’m sharing my design here. As I’m not really used to doing audio designs, I’d genuinely welcome any remarks or feedback. While I was at it, I also swapped the input jacks for hybrid XLR/TRS inputs and added switchable 48V phantom power. Next step: route it all and produce the PCB.
Hi All, I have a question about MIDI and especially the connector. Currently for the mod dwarf, there are jack connectors for midi. Isn’t more common to have DIN connectors ? I guess it was a question off empty space ?
I’m not qualified to comment on the design. But in the pedal world, TRS MIDI is becoming/has become, more or less, the standard over the unnecessarily large DIN MIDI. MIDI never made use of the outer pins in over 40 years of its existence so why take up the space and wire for two never-used pins?
