hey everybody. i've been using arduino for a couple of months now, and feel as if I'm starting to get pretty decent at it. I've been fooling around with building arduino based midi controllers, and wonder how difficult it would be to make them wireless using xbee modules. anybody have any experience with anything like this? money's tight, so I'd rather not spend 80 bucks on an xbee shield (or i suppose more like $24 and change for the chips and spare parts needed to assemble my own) if this isn't going to work.
I know that it needs to run at 38400 baud for MIDI communication-- it says on the datasheet that the xbee modules are capable of this baud rate and higher... anyone tried it?
i would consider my skill level to be intermediate, and i'm just trying to judge whether or not the actual xbee communication part of it will be something i can handle.
this forum's always been really helpful, so thanks in advance!
Sounds like you are doing something similar to me. I got a wireless network running at native MIDI (which is 31250 baud, not 38400) using XBees. I am yet to do a multiplexed output to get the data to MIDI, but if you want to reprogram the XBees, it's a snap. If you want to use a custom baud, use Bray's C++ Terminal. I had an issue with the carriage returns, so I used the send file function and make a file with the commands in Notepad, then sent that.
There is heaps of info here on how to reprogram the XBee using the Arduino so search for it, but you need something other that the Arduino IDE or Hyperterminal to talk to the XBee once it is set to a custom baud (hence Bray's terminal).
If you are worried about cash, but the kits from NKC. I bought mine and built them and they are working great. Digikey has the antennas for cheap, so the whole setup (Xbee + shield) is about $35 with shipping.
Hope that helps. My wireless MIDI glove is due in a week and I just got this far.....