Custom Midi PartII

I posted before about building the circuitry of a basic MIDI controller. What now need to know is how to allow the hardware to be understood by the computer. I need to write and use a driver for it right? MAX/MSP? How?

what kind of voltage-to-midi converter do you have in your controller?

if your controller outputs normal MIDI data over MIDI/DIN cable, then just hook it up to your MIDI interface, right?

only if you're using a USB or firewire output on your controller, you'll need some software to convert the USB/FW data to something that your sequencers etc can work with.

I don't have the answer, but how did you build the circuit? I have known people to build something with arduino or some other type of micro controller and port that directly into max or PD since they are already usb equipped.

when i pick out a driver i find DLLs work pretty reliably.

You couldn't write a midi driver in Max/MSP.

There's a couple of devices out there that do what you want already, with ready written drivers etc.. such as:

OEM board

Midibox USB module

Or you could look at the arduino board and do something much more interesting. You could then use Max to convert the input data to Midi information if you wanted, or pretty much whatever.

Or you could take apart a USB games controller with analogue sticks and make a controller with 4 sliders and 10 buttons.

You might want to learn Max a bit first though before you attempt any of this, other than the midi USB devices.

IEP: So far nothing has been built. I'm currently looking for it to have a USB output though.

Slightlydrybeans: Just downloaded a copy of Arduino from the site. I'll try and get a look at it tonight.

esquimaw; The OEM board looks like my best option at the minute. It's maybe a little steep but I've time to save for it.

For now my plans are to butter up the lab techs and get some of the old kit their getting rid of and modify it. When I first thought of doing this I didn't realise how much would be involve in the design. I'm still gettingyy head around stuff and I want to understand what I'm doing completely before I make a move on anything.

Thanks for all the help guys

Arduino is a hardware device. :) I bet you doenloaded the specs or something. I think there is some language it uses native though maybe you got that environment.

http://www.arduino.cc/

The cool thing is it's basically a controller already setup to understand any sort of sensor input. You could use knobs, buttons ect. or you could use accelerometers, color sensors, pressure sensors instead. Could make some pretty wicked stuff.

  slightlydrybeans said:

Arduino is a hardware device. :) I bet you doenloaded the specs or something. I think there is some language it uses native though maybe you got that environment.

 

http://www.arduino.cc/

 

The cool thing is it's basically a controller already setup to understand any sort of sensor input. You could use knobs, buttons ect. or you could use accelerometers, color sensors, pressure sensors instead. Could make some pretty wicked stuff.

Arduino is awesome. Program your stuff/patch on your computer and upload the software to the board later!