hi there, i'm new to the arduino world. i have a large scale EL wire project that i'm building and plan to use arduino to control small clusters of wire over multiple channels to create patterns and sequences. the next phase of the project would be to use MIDI control to trigger the sequences. this is a music related project where we want to match beat the lighting sequences to the music tempo.
anyone done this before? many thanks.
I've never used MIDI, but if you search for "Arduino MIDI", you'll get some good hits. MIDI can connect with a MIDI connector, or via USB. It will be easier it you can use a regular 'ol MIDI connection (serial) rather than USB-MID. It should be fairly straight-forward, since you just need to read the MIDI messages and control a light, rather than receiving a MIDI message and playing a note.
On the output/lighting side, you might consider [u]DMX-512[/u]. (You can also search for "Arduino DMX.) DMX is kind-of like MIDI for lighting, and it's how big shows are now done. If your entire show is programmed MIDI, you can consider programming the DMX separate from the MIDI, and just synchronize them. If the MIDI is live (and somewhat unpredictable), you'll want to capture the MIDI messages.
The code in this project:-
http://www.thebox.myzen.co.uk/Hardware/Glockenspiel.html
takes in MIDI information and fires solenoids, it is a simple matter to make it light up lights.
thanks for the reply. DMX is my world, i do lighting for film and TV so DMX is the go to protocol for me. but an arduino controller is smaller and way cheaper than a DMX system so i'm checking it out. are you saying that arduino can recognize a DMX signal? basically i'm trying to have my trigger system match the tempo/BPM of a song so the transitions match beats.
thanks for the link
are you saying that arduino can recognize a DMX signal