Newbie note-based midi controller

Design Concepts
1

Greetings,

I’m new to the world of DIY controllers, and I would like to make something similar to a keyboard midi controller but with buttons instead (possibly arcade style buttons). Essentially it would just be a large grid (at least 13x13 ideally, but using repeated notes and only spanning 5 octaves) to which I can assign note values and use in Reason/Logic/Pro Tools. I feel like this shouldn’t be too difficult to build, yet I’m having trouble figuring out how it would be done. Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

Chris

2

Welcome aboard, ChrisL! :flowers:

What you want to do is read a lot :slight_smile: http://ucapps.de/ will give you an overview over the modules that are available. There’s also a neat introduction in the WIKI: http://www.midibox.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=introduction_to_ucapps.de

Read through as much info as you can and right before your head starts smoking - ask :slight_smile: The more detailed your questions are the more precise the answer will be!

3

Thanks for your help! I’ve been reading away and I’m sure I’ll be back with some questions in the near future.

4

Greetings again,

My project is officially under way. I’ve started assembling the box itself which will consist of a simple wooden structure with 100 arcade style buttons in a 10x10 grid. I’m assuming MIDIO128 would be the simplest way to operate this box (please correct me if I’m wrong) since all the buttons will correlate with midi values. Here’s my tentative list of parts I’ll need:

1x Core

4x DIN

1x Power supply (haven’t been able to find much info on this, where would I find one?)

2x Midi jack

awholebunchx cable for soldering

Not sure if I’ll need:

1x LCD screen (won’t be in the final product, but from what I understand will come in handy for programming)

?x DOUT (there are no LEDs involved, not sure what else DOUT would be used for)

?x Bankstick (I plan on only having one midi value setup and not changing it)

Again, any help is much appreciated, Thanks!

Chris

5

  • You won’t need an LCD. It’s handy for debugging (especially with custom apps) but not necessary.

  • You won’t need a DOUT module - you don’t have any digital outs :wink:

  • You won’t need a bankstick.

  • PSU: Pretty much any 7-12V wallwart will do. 250mA+ should do since you have no LEDs/…

6

Great, I’ve ordered all my parts. I’ll post some pictures and/or videos when I’m all finished, assuming I have no other issues from here (which is quite an assumption). Thanks again

Chris

7

http://discourse.midibox.org/t/topic/9026

http://discourse.midibox.org/t/topic/10755

8x8 = 5x13

just route correctly things and you are done