As I write this at the start of the new year, I'm going for a little self-indulgence and am going to summarise some of the things I got up to in 2022. Partly as a "looking back" but also as a way of thinking about all the loose ends and "further ideas" that I often have at the end of my posts and then promptly forget about!
So as part of looking back, this can also be some inspiration for looking forward too. At least that is the hope.
Kevin
Warning! I strongly recommend using old or second hand equipment for your experiments. I am not responsible for any damage to expensive instruments!
January
I started the year with a couple of "I wonder if" projects, looking at ways to sending MIDI data over different physical channels.
Both of these were left in the "experimental" stage, but there was code pushed out to GitHub to provide an I2C transport for the Arduino MIDI library and sort of a similar driver for the Adafruit CircuitPython MIDI library. I still think there is great potential for "fixed configuration MIDI routing" applications but the controller-peripheral architecture isn't very good for a dynamic setup requiring things being plugged in and out all the time. Still it was quite a lot of fun and getting a Pico routing to eight Arduinos shows there is definitely more potential here.
- Pico Dual-core MIDI Visualisations was a "one off" project seeing if I could get several useful MIDI visualisations going using off-the-shelf, plug-in boards for a Raspberry Pi Pico - in this case a 4 digit 7-segment display and a RGB LED matrix. It was also a challenge in getting multi-threading working in Micropyton!
- Arduino MIDI Channelizer was triggered by a question via social media about using an Arduino to change the MIDI channel number of messages.
- Raspberry Pi Pico MIDI Pedal Keyboard returned to a project I built something like 20+ years ago, when I used an old MIDI keyboard to add MIDI to some old organ pedals. Well this brought it more up to date by using a Raspberry Pi Pico instead. It is a lot smaller!!
There are so many options for MIDI processing and visualisation that pretty much all the projects I've done so far only "scratch the surface". There is potential for arpeggiators, MIDI-level transposition, quantizing pitch, micro-tonal applications, and so much more. And in terms of MIDI visualisations and monitors, I've already tried a few, but I still have several different displays I want to get out and have a play with.
February
- Arduino RF24 MIDI Interface actually started at the tail-end of January, but part 2 continued into Feb. This was repeating the I2C experiments but this time over cheap NRF24L radios with an Arduino. I managed to get a multi-point link working but in terms of implementation it was quite inefficient! Part 2 lists all the limitations an ideas for further experimentation. But I enjoyed this one and would like to get back to it... "just because"
- Raspberry Pi Pico Multi MIDI Router - Part 2 created a prototype, stripboard MIDI router based on a Raspberry Pi Pico using the PIO to give a total of six MIDI IN/OUT ports. Further updates to this project will return several times this year, but more on that later!
- After several queries and requests for more details, I published The Lo-Fi Orchestra Explainer with a "map" of my Lo-Fi Orchestra along with MIDI implementation details. I didn't get up to much Lo-Fi Orchestra wise this year, but the few things I did, I'll mention later!
- Toy Keyboard Tone Piano was a set of project logs (continuing into March) showing how I took an old toy keyboard I picked up somewhere and turned it into a MIDI controller. But first, I built my own version of the Oskitone Scout! It starts with "reverse engineering" the existing circuitry and ends up embedding an Arduino with MIDI.
March
- Vintage Rotary Phone MIDI Controller was a key occupation throughout March, first investigating how a vintage rotary phone actually works, then finding different ways of utilising it for MIDI. I ended up using it as a MIDI controller for notes, program change and as a random note sequencer. But there is plenty of scope for producing more of a standardised MIDI control set for a rotary phone, and ideally a more robust way of interfacing to an Arduino would be really useful.
- Pi Day MIDI Sequencer was produced for March 14th (3/14/22 if you write your dates back-to-front - hence "Pi Day"). It uses the digits of Pi as the notes in a sequence coupled with the time taken to calculate the next digit on an 8-bit microcontroller. There is so much scope for using mathematical number sequences for musical sequences!
- In "Bare Metal" Raspberry Pi Synth - Part 4 I revisited my "bare metal" Raspberry Pi environment to try out Rene Stange's "mini synth" application.
After these relatively independent projects, I revisited some Arduino USB projects, including creating an "index" page of everything I know about Arduino and USB MIDI:
Finally two somewhat independent projects again.
- Arduino Slider Phased Rhythms uses my array of 8 slider potentiometers to bring a drum rhythm in and out of phase by adjusting the tempo of each "track". There are many opportunities for future phasing experiments.
- The Arduino Timed Relay was a quick project in preparation for something in April...
April
The start of April saw my first Lo-Fi Orchestra release of the year. Something I was thinking about since April last year:
- Lo-Fi Orchestra - 4'33" an electronic interpretation of John Cage's 4'33". Depending on your view of the world, this is either an April Fool or a contemporary Lo-Fi electronic interpretation of a classic. It certainly seems to have become both one of my most engaging videos on YouTube and also one of the most disliked! I suspect people are just waiting to see if anything else will happen!
In terms of electronics the month seems mostly dominated by another toy keyboard, MIDI diagnostic software tools, and more rotary phones!
There was another project in April, but as that then continued well into May and beyond, I'll get to that in a minute...
May
The end of April and start of May saw some experimenting with MiniDexed - a "bare metal" Raspberry Pi emulation of the Yamaha DX7 synthesizer. In fact, it can emulate 8 DX7 tone generators (at least on a Pi 3 or 4) making it more like the equivalent of a TX816. I've since really gotten into this project, having now even contributed code adding functionality back to the project.
Then followed a series of projects using an Arduino or Raspberry Pi Pico as a MIDI controller to usefully do things to my MiniDexed!
But there were several more general MIDI projects too.
The final project in May was another "one off", using tones() on a Raspberry Pi Pico to play with alternative frequency configurations (or "temperaments") for the major scale: An Even Tempered Pico.
June
June was a relatively light month in terms of project output, but pretty significant in terms of type of project as this month I finally had a go a PCB design. Something which, along with MiniDexed, has probably dominated the rest of the year! You can get a summary of all my PCB designs and build guides here on my PCBs page.
June also saw me starting down the path to some kind of user interface and IO controller board for my Zynthian. The first build just used some "thrown together with jumper wire" parts: Zynthian Revisited.
July
Another relatively light month, but dominated by PCB design!
August
A key development in August was a "proper" custom PCB design for my Raspberry Pi Pico Multi MIDI Router - Part 4. But there were published build guides for the PCB designs from July. I also had a play with some MIDI IO boards that were kindly sent to me from @VE7FIM from Twitter.
The following new PCB designs were published in August, all with build guides to appear later in the year:
September
All of the build guides for August's PCB designs went up in September, but there was still a bit of time for some extra projects too.
New PCB designs this month include:
October
Once again much of October was dominated by the build guides for the boards designed through September. But there were a couple of additional one-off projects, the most significant of which was probably the only major Lo-Fi Orchestra release this year:
The other projects this month included:
Finally, I took all my latest projects on Zynthian and combined them with my new Zynthian IO board PCB to produce a CD Rack Format Zynthian that has made it a lot easier to use for me.
November
This month started with some more PCB designs:
But there was also time for some MIDI projects too.
- Arduino Stackable TRS MIDI Interface - shows how to "hack" TRS connections onto my Arduino MIDI Proto shield to make a nice stackable MIDI interface. I revisit this idea later in a re-release of my Arduino MIDI Proto shield to include dual MIDI DIN and TRS component footprints directly onto the PCB.
- Raspberry Pi Pico MIDI Channel Muter - uses my Pimoroni RGB keypad and a Raspberry Pi Pico as a set of mute buttons for MIDI channels.
There then follows two applications showing how to use my new Nano multi-tone/PWM PCB (which came back pretty quickly) with previous projects of mine:
And one miscellaneous project - Arduino MIDI Telephone Ringer Revisited starts to look at using an off-the-shelf "subscriber line module" to interface to a rotary telephone. There is lots more to be done here, but this starts to hint that something interesting is definitely possible!
December
A good chunk of December has been spent on a new design that I'm not really ready to talk about (much) yet, but there were still a couple of additional projects too.
First of all, I published the build guides for my two Mozzi experimenter boards - one for the Uno and one for the Nano.
But the main project writeup was simply showing how to use the Uno Mozzi experimenter shield in a way that is compatible with the Arduino "Make your Uno" kit that came out this year - Arduino Multi-pot Mozzi FM Synthesis - Revisited.
This kit includes a 5-pot synth shield, so this project presented a sketch that was compatible with both my new PCB and the official Arduino Uno Synth Shield.
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