MIDI input? Has anyone seen any work done for a MIDI input to use

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MIDI input?

Has anyone seen any work done for a MIDI input to use for triggering?

I was thinking of a strip of 60 and each pixel reacts to a preassigned note… say middle pixel is Middle “C”
Maybe have the Key Velocity info (values 0-127) affect brightness in relation to how hard the key was hit.

Then use CC’s (Control Change) msg’s to alter patterns/brightness, etc.

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I found some posts about MIDI when I searched this site, but nothing to give me details…

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Ah midi!! I’ll bite because I use midi to control lighting all the time… But usually when I do it I go into a laptop which maps the midi triggers into lighting/pixel data which is sent onto an Ethernet lighting network using a program like Lightjams. This is usually for large scale events.

For your application, what platform is running FastLED? The reason I ask is because a modern midi keyboard wants to talk MiDI over USB, so your system needs to act as a USB host, which most Arduino platforms cannot. If you want to work with old school 5pin DIN midi, you could probably get that signal into an Arduino pretty easily and write a sketch to do something like you said with the midi data.

Lemme know more about your target microcontroller platform and your preferred midi transport.

Respect,
Steve French
Voltvision.com

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Hi Steve,

thanks for your comments.

I am currently using Uno, mini Pro and be ordering a nano soon.
I have DIN outs from my PC or other gear and was thinking of using it vs. USB’d midi.
So using a PIN on a platform is what I had in mind.

I imagine it’s really a simple matter of capturing the midi data for say… a note msg, then grab the note and velocity data to do the simple note-position and velocity-brightness translations…
guess I just need some pointers to some sketches on how to get the midi in first…
I’m so new to all this.

~Blaine

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http://www.instructables.com/id/Send-and-Receive-MIDI-with-Arduino/?ALLSTEPS has some code/instructions for how you can receive midi on the arduino.

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Thanks Daniel, I’ll see if I can use that info.

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Also, for sending/receiving data from 5pin DIN MIDI with an Arduino, if I were you I would try something like a MIDI shield. I didnt really research it, but I found one that looks nice here for US$20ish…

The cool part is that they give you the schematics and the Arduino example sketches to get it working…then once you have MIDI notes coming in, you can tie in the FastLED functionality and mapping.

Lastly, I should point out that if you are generating MIDI data on a computer and you can send it out USB (computer is USB host), then I would strongly consider using a Teensy2 because Paul @ PJRC re-wrote his own USB stack and it allows the Teensy2 to act like a class-compliant USB MIDI device (USB device)…then you can tie that into FastLED. The Teensy2 uses the Atmel 32u4 chip which has native USB (if the drivers are done right). I have not had any luck doing this with a “regular” arduino…not sure if the Teensy3.x works like this also.
Good luck!
-frenchy

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Here are a few of my bookmarks on the subject:

http://www.thebox.myzen.co.uk/Hardware/MIDI_Shield.html

http://theaudiostash.wordpress.com/tag/midi/

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thanks for the links Jon.

I found the Midi Library

http://arduinomidilib.fortyseveneffects.com/index.html

looks like a ton of routines already simplified

seems simple,
begin MIDI read
check the midiType
list the actions to take for each type. using the data to hand over to FASTled to give position/color/brightness.

seems simple, but it will take me quite awhile to understand what’s going on, then write the code.
LED’s should be here in a few days.