Introduction: Touch Midi Controller (DIY)

By http://services.shamalstart.com/
About: Fab Lab Irbid is a small-scale workshop for personal digital fabrication, equipped with an array of flexible computer controlled tools and various materials, with the aim to make almost anything.

The idea behind this project is to make a functional Midi controller, easy to build with low cost, so anyone can build it.

We designed a full size keyboard shape midi controller not just a few buttons and knobs.

This project is done by fablab Irbid`s coordinator, Yazan ABU Dabaseh .

Step 1: Materials and Tools.

In case you want to make your own Midi controller, you'll need the following:

  1. Arduino Due: In our case we used Arduino Due but you can use any Arduino with a native USB port such as Arduino Leonardo.
  2. Wires: A lot of them.

  3. copper adhesive tape.MDF 5 mm thickness: You can use any materials to build the structure.

  4. Acrylic transparent 3 mm Thickness.
  5. Conductive paint "Electric paint": We use it to distinguish the black keys on the midi controller layout.

Step 2: Design and Manufacturing

We used AutoCAD software to do the design. We wanted to design something that would look close to a midi controller.

To cut the design we used Trotec speedy 400 machine.

We used Mdf 5 mm,the settings for cutting is:

Power 89%

Speed 1.2

Frequency 5000.

Step 3: Putting It All Together

  • Cut the adhesive copper tape manually to fit the size of each key.
  • Carefully we tapped each copper key to its location.
  • Connect each copper key to a single Arduino pin using wires.

Step 4: Programming

The base of this project is two libraries:

  1. The first one is the " Native Capacitive Sensors without additional Hardware".
  2. The second one is " MIDIUSB library "

So, basically we defined each key on a single pin on the Arduino, then we linked them with the midi USB library, to send a midi signal through the native USB to a computer.

The code is attached

Attachments