Hey Everyone!
Total Newbie to all of this so I am sorry if this is an easy question but I've spent a few hours trying to find the answer to no avail (I also wasn't sure where to post this, but I can repost in the appropriate forum). Apologies in advance if this is an inelegant way of explaining what I want to accomplish:
My band is going on tour and I want to create a light show using LED strips similar to the second Youtube Link below. We play to a click track so I'd like to write a light show in a DAW using midi where each note represents a light.
What I want to do, is go into a DAW (first Youtube Link) and write a light show to tempo for each song. I think the easiest way would be to then export those individual songs to the arduino and make a Playlist for our set that I can control with just a simple Play//Stop//Forward//Backward button set up.
Thank you so so much in advance!
VictoryDanceNY:
What I want to do, is go into a DAW (first Youtube Link) and write a light show to tempo for each song. I think the easiest way would be to then export those individual songs to the arduino and make a Playlist for our set that I can control with just a simple Play//Stop//Forward//Backward button set up.
The Arduino can receive MIDI messages and control LED strips fairly easily. That is what the first example video seems to show. The Arduino is not storing the tracks, just acting on the MIDI messages as they arrive. The second video may be roughly the same.
I'm not sure about your goal of "exporting those individual songs to the Arduino". The Arduino has very little SRAM and EEPROM storage so if you want it to store songs and act on them alone you will probably have to add additional storage like an SD card. Did you want the Arduino to synchronize its playback of the 'songs' with some external signal?
Thank you very much and I am sorry for not being more accurate with what I meant to accomplish.
Yes, I want to write the 'songs' in the DAW and save them to an SD Card then control the playback of the songs using a simple external controller.
What file format does the DAW export?
.Mid, .Wav, .AIFF, .CAF, .Mp3, .AAC
VictoryDanceNY:
.Mid, .Wav, .AIFF, .CAF, .Mp3, .AAC
So what joins up your light show with those sound files?
I don't know what a .CAF file is. .Wav, .AIFF, .Mp3, and .AAC are all audio files which the Arduino would have a hard time turning into light commands. I'm guessing you plan to use .Mid (MIDI) files. Have you found any published sketches that have the Arduino interpreting MIDI files? That would be a good first step.
Grumpy_Mike:
So what joins up your light show with those sound files?
I think I could use something like this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbGwszuN6ww
to access the 'songs' on the SD card and play them.
There won't be any sound coming from the files, just the midi to tell the lights how to respond. I think that answers what you're asking me.
johnwasser:
I don't know what a .CAF file is. .Wav, .AIFF, .Mp3, and .AAC are all audio files which the Arduino would have a hard time turning into light commands. I'm guessing you plan to use .Mid (MIDI) files. Have you found any published sketches that have the Arduino interpreting MIDI files? That would be a good first step.
Yes, I'm planning on using .Mid files. Everything I've looked up points to this Instructables as the way to go:
I'm sorry if I'm over simplifying or not being clear, I'm totally out of my depth here.
VictoryDanceNY:
Yes, I'm planning on using .Mid files. Everything I've looked up points to this Instructables as the way to go:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Send-and-Receive-MIDI-with-Arduino/?ALLSTEPS
Note that "sending and receiving" MIDI messages is different from reading and interpreting MIDI song files. The messages contain no timing information: the MIDI instrument acts on them when they arrive. The data in the song file format includes information about WHEN to act on the data.
This post from 2013 has attached code for MIDI Type 0 file format. http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=186513.0
The last reply has a pointer to a MIDI file parsing library: http://arduinocode.codeplex.com/releases/view/115256
