Another DIY MIDI Pedal

C

Chris Hurley

Power User
A while back I made a real simple MIDI controller pedal using an Arduino microcontroller board. Even though I made it small, it ended up too big to slip in a gig bag, so I'm going to build another one that is smaller.

Arduino is an "open source" prototyping platform based around inexpensive (but ubiquitous) Atmel microcontrollers. Coding is made to be accessible for "artists", not just programmers. It's C with a preprocessor. It was very easy to get basic MIDI commands going such as is needed for program change and IA change messages.

Anyone have any interest in carpooling or otherwise coming along for the ride?

I'll be using a Teensy (Teensy USB Development Board again because its very small, inexpensive and has a fair amount of i/o and memory.

I've got someone bending up a 9x11x1.5" enclosure to use, which will give me a bottom row of 4 buttons, a middle row of 3 and a top row of 2 plus a small LCD. Space will be tight but I think the staggered layout will allow this to be workable. This is still a wider spacing than my ADA MC-1 had.
 
Cool idea. I'm still working with a protoboard version here. I ended up replacing my Lexicon pedal with an All Access and once that happened my tinkering slowed to a crawl.
 
i have a full arduino program i've prototyped with a 15 button foot controller that models a midi footswitch... haven't built yet. allows for up to 15 buttons on board, with 4 expression pedals + 4 external switches, LCD display too. but only programmable through arduino usb interface (no on board, on the go programming available)... so i've been on this ride for a while ;)

edit: i use a hammond 1444-29 enclosure that is 12"x10"x2" which gives me a 4x3 button arrangement with LCD screen, 2 buttons are used for bank up/down and 1 button for tap tempo ;)
 
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I keep meaning to put my arduino code on out github...but then you'd see my arduino code and all it's un-glory. :)
 
this thread got me going again on the controller... i've decided to go big! with all the 15 buttons and what not.. putting together a nice mouser and smallbear order for enclosure and switches/ connectors etc ;) (sorry to hijack thread! but i'd be willing to share code if needed!)
 
My chassis are on the way... I'm pretty well set on what switches will be on the face of it. I've got plenty of pins for external jacks/switches but I haven't really figured out how I'd use them. The main issue for external pedals is that if I want an LED, I've got to use stereo jacks and cables and I'm not wild about that for some reason.

Instead, I could multiplex reading the switch and lighting an LED of one wire and ground- you light the LED if its supposed to be lit and then you pull the pin up long enough to read it, then put it back however it is supposed to be. I'm pretty sure that I eventually got it to work under testing. The result is that all the LED's twinkle. Maybe that's a good thing on a dark stage. :)

Another trick I'm trying to figure out how I might use is to have a bank of say 4 external switches that I'd read off a single stereo jack via an analog pin. Its basically like a potentiometer made of resistors and you'd decide which button is pushed based on what voltage you're reading from the wiper. Just not sure what function could be represented this way with no LED's

I'm just having a hard time thinking of things that I'd actually use. :)
 
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