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Which way to go to make a 5x5 button interface


bubbles
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Hi,

 

I'm slightly overwhelmed with the amount of information and wondering if anyone could help me filter through some of it.

 

I'm hoping to make a pretty simple little interface, a 5x5 button pad that just sends out midi note on/off, no velocity or anything fancy. Maybe light up an led inside the buttons as well, i'm designing it around the spark fun 4x4 rubber buttons, but gonna buy a couple and cut them up and make it 5x5.

 

I'm intrigued at the ST32 discovery board as it looks very cheap compared to an arduino, and Midi OS seems it would suit the needs of this project perfectly, but wondering what else do I need to get to materialise this? 

 

What do I need to get at this Midi box shop?

 

Or should I even go down the Midi box route, it's unfamiliar territory from Arduino, but I know it's probably the right way for make Midi interfaces. Is it worth it for such a simple application? How hard is it to get to grips with coming from Arduino?

 

Is there not a little dev board out there that's got some shift registers already built in, as to make it easier to plug loads of things in?

 

Sorry to bug you guys!! Any points in the right direction would be greatly appreciated :)

 

Thanks 

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Hi Bubbles

There is a very easy way to make a such solution. The IO ports on the STM32F4Core allow a 16In and 16Out directly. (LINK -Search for DIO) So its not exactly what you are asking for because a 5x5 button pad has to be made with Shift registers. A 4x4 can be connected directly. But there is another drawback. The Sparkfun Rubberbutton PCB is layouted in Matrix form so to use this readymade PCB you will need to use shift registers anyway. I don't know the Ardiono Midi world so you might have to ask in a arduino forum to get answers about the hardware needed there. For Midibox i can list what you need:

1xSTM32F4Core

1xDIO_Matrix Module

 

Or you go for a 3x8 Buttonpad from my Layout: Doku / shop whith that you will need a core as well...

 

Best regards

novski

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Hi Bubbles

There is a very easy way to make a such solution. The IO ports on the STM32F4Core allow a 16In and 16Out directly. (LINK -Search for DIO) So its not exactly what you are asking for because a 5x5 button pad has to be made with Shift registers. A 4x4 can be connected directly. But there is another drawback. The Sparkfun Rubberbutton PCB is layouted in Matrix form so to use this readymade PCB you will need to use shift registers anyway. I don't know the Ardiono Midi world so you might have to ask in a arduino forum to get answers about the hardware needed there. For Midibox i can list what you need:

1xSTM32F4Core

1xDIO_Matrix Module

 

Or you go for a 3x8 Buttonpad from my Layout: Doku / shop whith that you will need a core as well...

 

Best regards

novski

 

Hi Novski,

 

Thank you so much for your reply, I'm intrigued by the 16in/out directly, pity you can't just use the normal 4x4 pcb straight in!

 

I think I'm going to try it out with the 4x4 pad first anyways, see if I can even get it sending notes and get familiar with the programming process on the discovery.

 

Your 3x8 project looks great, ideally down the line I would like to make a pcb for the 5x5 grid in the same manner as you. 

 

I think this is the best way to go over the arduino, because this is specifically for making Midi instruments and people seem to have successfully done it quite a few times now!

 

Is it simple enough to format the received bits from the shift register into notes? I want to make a few different modes of operation like being able to change scales (diatonic modes, melodic minor etc). Ideally it would have two main modes of operation, scales and a chord memoriser. Does this seem like a relatively simple thing to accomplish with the midi box? Or is there limitations on programming I should be aware of? 

 

Also do you know any good books/guides that detail programming a midi interface with MidiBox? Are there any cookbooks to get started with this platform?

 

Thank you very much for your help so far!

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Hi bubbles

you are welcome to use my layouts i have published on github. LINK

I have no idea of diatonic and melodic modes. Midibox seams to me to be the best Midi solution. Its realy easy to program different Banks that let you virtually multiply your 5x5 pad... 

Maybe its best to get a STM32F4 first and try to do first steps with MIOS, it costs just about 15$... With that you can follow the tutorial on ucapps.de under Midibox_NG Project. LINK

 

Best Regards

novski

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You my fiend are an absolutely awesome person! Thank you so much. I think I could just use your pcb to experiment with, I have a good way to think about it, say I use your 3x8 layout, I would like to make a 3 string bass guitar essentially if that makes sense, lay it out chromatically on the 8 rows, and on the columns separate them by fifths, ie E A D. I've been studying jazz and have a pretty good grip of diatonic scales, I would just like to map them differently in different modes for instance, one mode could be pentatonics, next diatonic, then chromatically like the aforementioned guitar like controller. 

 

I think I could use your PCB, would save me some hassle and yours is massively cheap and easier compared to making my own, just afraid of the smt stuff.

I could test bed the idea pretty simply and get some instantaneous feedback. I could do both 4x4 and 3x8, I want to give them to some friends that make great production, but have bad music theory skills, so I want to embed my knowledge in a device I can help them to learn music through. Have you seen the launchpad or ableton Push? I would like to make a smaller version (5x5 is minimum to mimic the guitars layout) that I can put various scales and chords into, spits out midi notes, so can be used live with analog synths that accept midi.

 

Sorry for the rant, I'm very enthusiastic about this project! I have a video of the Max/msp patch that I've prototyped with the scales and chord memoriser, it uses the Native Instruments maschine (basically a 4x4 pad)

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdNX5Qz4g5I 

 

I dream to put it inside a microprocessor basically! But would really to mimic the guitar with the 5x5 thing ideally. 

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Here are some tutorials: http://svnmios.midibox.org/listing.php?repname=svn.mios32&path=%2Ftrunk%2Fapps%2Ftutorials%2F

 

And here is a minimal application which shows how to force MIDI notes to a scale: http://svnmios.midibox.org/listing.php?repname=svn.mios32&path=%2Ftrunk%2Fapps%2Fprocessing%2Fmidi_force_to_scale%2F

 

It requires some self-education to put these pieces together, there is especially no additional literature about the MIDIbox platform aside from the information on ucapps.de, wiki.midibox.org and the SVN repositories.

 

Best Regards, Thorsten.

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