I'm totally new to Arduino, so the answers to this question may already be in other discussion forums or training resources, but I want to repurpose a light up floor tile so it acts as a midi controller, specifically doing the job that one pad on a launchpad would do in Ableton Live. Does anyone have any useful advice?
Welcome to the forum
Does the floor tile have a means of reading an input ? Maybe a switch, touch pad etc ?
Welcome!
Which one? Post a link to its technical specifications. Please explain how this one tile will control a MIDI system? The launchpad I am familiar with is used to launch rockets. Links please. Which Arduino are you planning on using? Have you ever written code and debugged it previously? Any hardware experience?
How do you plan to use the pad, eg. input, light to show its on or go with the music?
More definition would be great!
I'm as green as the grass when it comes to coding! I've only just dipped my toe in the water with Arduino, and need to have a deeper dive to learn about how things work. What I do know is that I want to create an accessible launch button for Ableton that can be stepped on to activate audio. The sort of tiles I've been looking at are light up, activated by pressure. I'm hoping I can change it so as well as light, it also triggers an audio clip off ableton when stepped on.
Hi @konnectaudio !
Let's sort things out...
- Ableton Live refers to a Windows or macOS Software that allows users to create sound effects
see here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ableton_Live - The software can be controlled by MIDI keyboards
So this part is easy as MIDI commands can be created by Arduino controllers. If you use a controller with built-in USB support (like Leonardo or similar) the controller can directly act as a USB MIDI device.
How to interface the tile depends on the availability of sensible effects when the tile is pressed/illuminated. In "worst case" you could detect when the light is switched on/off. However there will be quite likely other possibilities; for a sound answer you must give more precise information about brand/type ...
The tile will quite likely use LEDs for the light effect. As Arduino is generally capable to control LEDs there is a good chance that the effects can also be changed. Again only probability since the type is unknown. If the control would not be possible for any reason the LEDs could be exchanged by compatible led stripes.
So the answer is:
- It's very likely that your project can be done.
- How to perform it depends on the specific design of the material you have in mind.
Good luck!
ec2021