A midi instrument made with an Arduino microcontroller.
This project aims to be simple, cheap and easy to recreate at home.
- A "funduino" microcontroller (a cheap but fully functional Arduino clone) - $15.19
- A 500mm SoftPot Membrane Potentiometer - $25.95
- A Force Sensitive Resistor - $7.95
- A MIDI Connector - $1.95
- 3 LEDs - Any colour you like - $1.05 *
- 3 220Ω resistors + A 10 kΩ resistors - Almost nothing, let's say $1 *
- A Rotary Potentiometer - 10k Ohm, Linear - $0.95 *
- Enough Wire - $2.50 *
- A breadboard can be nice - $5.40 *
For a total price of approximately $61.94 (USD) (plus taxes, plus shipping fees). Note that items with a * can be bought at any electronic store for a really cheap price.
- A midi cable (or MIDI to USB, if you want to plug it on your computer) - Since this is a MIDI instrument, it doesn't produce any sound by itself.
- A MIDI synthesizer. It can be a software synthesizer (such as ZynAddSubFX under GNU/Linux, OS X and Windows), or a hardware syntetiser (such as Llammas, the Arduino MIDI synthesizer we developped along with this project). In all cases, the legato mode should be supported, in order to avoid audio 'clicks' on note change.
Do this:
You will need to add to your Arduino IDE (Sketch > Import Library) the Arduino MIDI library. After that, simply compile and transfer the program on your Arduino board.
Plug the MIDI In side of your MIDI cable in the controller and the MIDI Out in your synthesizer to be ready to play ! Put a finger on the force sensor and slide another on the SoftPot Membrane Potentiometer to hear magical sounds.
- The force sensor determines the velocity of the notes.
- The SoftPot Membrane Potentiometer determines the current note.
- The Rotary Potentiometer determines the current octave (0 to 7).
- The LEDs indicate the current octave (in binary, you'll get used to it).
If you have any problem, you can contact us at 316k [ät] legtux [döt] org and we'll be happy to help you.
This instrument has been conceived by Nicolas Hurtubise, Guillaume Riou & Aude Forcione-Lambert and is distributed under the terms of the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for more details.
Contributions are always appreciated :) Just be sure to include all the required documentation to reproduce what you've done (this may include a circuit diagram). Keep in mind that the instrument should stay fully MIDI compatible.