I'm in the design process of my final midi controller prototype, and I realized half way through the panel layout that I really need to think about the number of buttons and pots I am using... As I said, I am about half way through and I'm currently sitting at 64 pots and over a hundred buttons... I can easily see 30 more pots and 80-100 buttons.
That doesn't even get into the leds, so far I have eight 1x12 led bars, and I can see at least 150-180 more leds...
I guess my question should be, can the arduino even handle a midi device like this without any latency? I know it can handle the quantity of inputs, with the various multiplexers/expanders/etc that are out there, but can it handle it fast enough? Keep in mind that I only have two hands and 10 fingers, so there isn't a ton of input going on at any one time, but there will be a steady stream of midi input to deal with...
I'm almost thinking two atmega's would be ideal (one for input one for output, it would also give me one midi-thru port)... I also came across the maple platform (75mhz arm cortex with an arduino like environment/code)... I have no doubt that the maple could handle it, but I dont really want to deal with early beta code (the arduino style port is not yet complete)...
Any input?
