Hello, I'm new to the forums and am looking for some info as to what the best approach to building a large MIDI controller is. I've heard the way to go may be the Arduino Leonardo which sounds alright to me I'm just wondering what I can do with it and if it's possible to build a 'large' midi controller or not. I've heard of people having like four or five knobs or whatever & maybe some buttons but what if I'm wanting to build something a bit bigger.. do I need more controllers or what? What do I do?
P.S. I don't really have anything in mind just yet as to what it is I'm going to build.. I know I want to build a MIDI controller but I'm not too sure what I'm going to be using it for just yet. lol. Just wanting to see what is possible before I get too deep.
Thanks for the help!
I've never made a MIDI controller, but my advice is to start with something smaller. When you've got a few MIDI controls/commands working learn about [u]multiplexing[/u] and wire-up a couple of multiplexed pots (or switches). With multiplexing, you can handle an almost unlimited number of controls.
The Leonardo is a nice board for a small MIDI controller. For example, a few years back, I built one that has 4 faders and 8 potentiometers, with 4 mute buttons, a switch to switch between channels 1-4 and 5-8, and a rotary encoder to scroll through the audio timeline.
You can see it in action in this video.
The build guide can be found here.
If you want more inputs, I'd recommend a Teensy or an Arduino Due. They both support MIDI over USB, and the Teensy isn't that much more expensive than the Leonardo.
For the code, you can use my MIDI Controller library, it supports pretty much all Arduino and Teensy boards, like the Uno, Mega, Zero, Due, Leonardo, Micro, Teensies ... and it's very easy to add controls and to customize it.
Hope this helps!
Pieter
Fantastic, that helps a lot! Thanks guys!!