Connecting a button to a computer

Hello,

as I'm completely new to this field, I'm just going to ask a few questions about an upcoming project I have in mind:

As an organist with a digital home organ I want to add such a toe piston, that is connected to my computer:
http://www.syndyne.com/products/proddet.php?prodid=50

When pushed, it gives one input to the computer.

What possibilities of connection are there? As the rest of my organ works over a (closed) Midi-system, would it be possible/useful to go over Midi too?

Thanks for your help :slight_smile:

That largely depends on how closed your closed MIDI system is. Does it have MIDI-In, or just MIDI-Out? Is there any documentation?

Then, you would need to decide what sort of MIDI message you want to be sent, when the button is pressed and when it is released.

Once that is decided, wiring up a button to a Arduino and having it send a MIDI message is fairly easy.

My organ has a Midi-In, but I'm not sure if this signal would be forwarded to my computer. On the other hand I dont have and cant find a Midi-table of the organ, so not sure, whats in use. So I would rather not want to mess with it :slight_smile:

The moment the button is pressed, I just want to have one single signal (like a click) and none when it its released.

Here I found the Midi implementation chart, if thats any help (on page 27)
http://www.johannus.com/static/uploads/downloads/UM_Opus_EN.pdf

SO you want to connect a button to the computer for that you also need to have a app on your computer where you can select the com port to which your arduino is connected to and then utilise a Serial Port component to read the bits from arduino.

The way of doing this in steps is:

Attach a button to Arduino(any one you want like a very simple push button or any complicated button you think you like) after that write an application in the language you know about like c# to accumulate all that information coming from Arduino that what to do when button on arduino is pressed.