Raspberry Pi Pico MIDI Box: Blog#1 Introduction
The idea of this MIDI has always been in my head ever since I saw the Adafruit project video. It was quite amazing to see the MIDI in action. Previously i planned to build one, but it just stay as one of my to-do projects as I was busy with other work. That was until I saw this design challenge. I thought this is the right time to build this project. That's how I ended up building this project. The project is not something new, people have built it previously. I just build my version of MIDI.
Now let's talk about this project.
What is a MIDI?
MIDI which stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface is a technical standard that describes a protocol, digital interface and connectors and allows a wide variety of electronic musical instrument instruments, computers and other related devices to connect and communicate with one another. A single MIDI link can carry up to sixteen channels of information, and each one can be routed to a separate device. So, what does a MIDI carry? Well MIDI carries event messages that specify notation, pitch, velocity, and control signal parameters such as volume, vibrato, audio panning, cues and clock signals that set and synchronize tempo between multiple devices. (source: https://learn.adafruit.com/collins-lab-midi/learn-more)
The Idea
For this design challenge, I have decided to make my own MIDI. This MIDI will have 12 inputs. Below is the first sketch of the idea.
Once I have an idea of what my design should look like, I started to research how to build one. I found that different people have different preferences. I decided to stick with this idea. And I also found that different people use different microcontrollers to control the LED or to achieve the purpose/goal.
In the second blog, we shall see the hardware required to build this project.