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[Reply #15 on:]

I would match your projects to the number of inputs / outputs you can get.

Yes a shield is expensive but it is ready built and so it time is important and your hardware skill level low it should be your choice.

I myself would use multiplexers and port expanders.
The 4051 will give you 8 analogue inputs, in this project I used two to give me 16 inputs, with the four on the board this gives you 20.
http://www.thebox.myzen.co.uk/Hardware/MIDI_Footsteps.html
On the digital side then a MCP23S17 gives you 16 I/O per chip and it is easy to add up to 8 chips on the same SPI bus. Again the same project gives you and example of using them.

[Reply #16 on:]

Yeah, i know how to use multiplexers... At school we have 74xxx from fairchild but in this case I'll use a shield! (you know, more confortable to use, the project will result less chaotic etc. :p). Now i am in doubt: which shield should i use? There are many In to use...

Is this mux shield enough for me or i must find a bigger one? Maybe should I buy a bigger arduino (mega for example)?

What's your idea about this?

[Reply #17 on:]

is this mux shield enough for me

That's up to you and if you think you can have a useful interface with that number of inputs. A Mega would make things easier as well. Most Uno shields fit on a Mega.

[Reply #18 on:]

Mux shield is enough for us... We can program it to have all single inputs and we can take all the digital in with some matrix.

[Reply #19 on:]

However if you want the arduino to actually look like a MIDI input to ableton live then this is a bot more complicated. You have to have either an intermediate application on the computer that takes in the arduino serial and then creates an internal MIDI bus for ableton live to pick up on.

Mike, Do you have any suggestions for an application for mac osx that can convert the serial data from a usb port to MIDI?

I am attempting to do the same thing. Only with one input instead of a ton. I am using a Ping distance sensor which sends back a length of time to the arduino in milliseconds. I will have to figure out how to convert that time to what I will be sending over serial to the computer, which is where the intermediate application will convert it to MIDI.

So my second question is, what kind of data would an application like this accept?

[Reply #20 on:]

It is simple enough to write one in Processing. However you will have to decide what the software relationship would be between your transducer output and the MIDI message format?