ECE 110/120 Honors Lab Section : Ribbon Controller MIDI Keyboard-'Talking Heads'

Group: Haoyuan You(hy19)

• Introduction
• Statement of Purpose

Well, here's the saying goes: 'if you can't join the talented music producers club, at least you can make instruments for them'.

So here's the plan:
A ribbon controller (those touching senors in your MIDI keyboards) produce analog signals and Arduino converts it to MIDI signal with the Arduino-MIDI lib, and send MIDI signal to my computer so it can make some noise. If there was enough time, make arduino itself a audio source and add knobs to adjust ADSR(envelopes).

• • Background Research

Driven force? Isn't it because everyone I know have their own MIDI keyboards while I don't? lol

So I found a guy who is fond of making DIY MIDI keyboard called 'Synthhacker', http://synthhacker.blogspot.com/2016/03/diy-midi-ribbon-controller.html So it is basically plagiarism jobs. The main differences here is he has a $500 synthesizer as the output audio source, but what I have is only my laptop. So far I'm not sure if I can make it play notes, and that should be the largest issue.
His codes: https://github.com/chipaudette/ArduinoMidi/tree/master/MidiRibbonController_Filtering

About how to Analog-MIDI: https://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/AnalogToMidi and https://github.com/FortySevenEffects/arduino_midi_library

For the MIDI-Laptop part, since we have MIDI-USB cable and there's a bunch of synthesizer softwares on Windows so it won't be a big problem to play notes instantly.

There's someone used arduino as the audio source and his webpage is here: http://www.fakebitpolytechnic.com/ and his code: http://www.fakebitpolytechnic.com/ WARNING: This Guy Don't Write ReadMe.
Design Details

• Block Diagram / Flow Chart

• System Overview

I think the system is self-explained.
(Just too lazy to write anything. If this is mandatory I will add up later...)

• Parts

• Possible Challenges

Importing any library is not a easy task, by any means. Moreover, I am running the whole thing on a AVR architecture, I used to play with ARM architectures. I don't even know what I should do with an IDE without 'go to definition' and 'go to reference' if I want to check the library files or create a project with multiply source files.

And I had no experience playing with MIDI.

Have no idea how to assemble a ribbon controller

...

WHY AM I CHOOSING THIS PROJECT AT ALL? HELP ! LET ME OUT !

Just kidding. Everything is under control. It's just something little bit out of my comfort zone.

• References

Arduino.cc. (2019). Arduino - AnalogToMidi. [online] Available at: https://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/AnalogToMidi [Accessed 22 Sep. 2019].
Fakebitpolytechnic.com. (2019). Fakebit Polytechnic. [online] Available at: http://www.fakebitpolytechnic.com/ [Accessed 22 Sep. 2019].
DIY MIDI Ribbon Controller.(2019). [online] Synthhacker.blogspot.com. Available at: http://synthhacker.blogspot.com/2016/03/diy-midi-ribbon-controller.html [Accessed 22 Sep. 2019].