control Arduino in realtime through USB MIDI

Forum 2005-2010 (read only) Hardware Interfacing
1

Hi

I have recently bought an arduino board as a possible solution for a project I am working on. I am trying to build a light organ - made of clear acrylic pipes each fitted with a set of LED's at the base. I want to be able to control the lights through MIDI - as I will be using a MIDI synth. This will be plugged into a sampler for the audio element and also send a MIDI signal to my computer (OS X) to trigger visual clips. What I am trying to figure out is how I can pass on this MIDI data my computer will be receiving onto the arduino board and simply control a set of LED's plugged into the digital I/O pins. The overall desired effect is to be able to trigger from one MIDI note a sound+video clip+LED.
From what I understand I would need to use another software like Processing to translate the MIDI data into serial data. Has anyone had much experience with this? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

2

If you want to construct a device with the Arduino that can directly connect to a MIDI output then there is no need for any other language. See here:-
www.thebox.myzen.co.uk/Hardware/Glockenspiel.html
just substitute LEDs for the solenoids. However, if you want your connection to use the USB connection to the Arduino then you will need in effect to communicate via the serial port (hidden in the USB connection to the Arduino). then you would need a program at the other end, probably written in processing. For an example of that see:_
http://www.thebox.myzen.co.uk/Hardware/Mini_Monome.html
the processing examples talk to the Arduino, you then only need to add a MIDI input to the processing program to ferry your information on to the Arduino.