I've built up an Arduino Uno shield for my Arduino Drum Trigger to MIDI. This includes a proper buffered input stage for six inputs and output to TRS MIDI.
Warning! I strongly recommend using old or second hand equipment for your experiments. I am not responsible for any damage to expensive instruments!
If you are new to Arduino, see the Getting Started pages.
The Circuit
I've used the input stage from my Educational DIY Synth Thing, but the pull-up is to 5V rather than 3V3. This means that in the software, the trigger itself will now be active-low.
There is a very basic, unbuffered MIDI OUT stage to a MIDI Type A TRS connector.
I've linked the trigger inputs to D2-D7 which leaves D8-D13 free for extras, such as adding LEDS or similar. A0-A5 are also unused.
All power will come from the Arduino Uno.
PCB Design
Starting a new KiCAD project using the Arduino template means that most of the shield output already exists along with mounting holes and Arduino headers.
I've removed the two mounting holes on the far right, and squared off the board to allow all the TRS sockets to fit. The board outline was also extended slightly off to the left to fit the TRS sockets alongside the mounting holes.
The board will have to be built with extended headers to ensure that the solder side of the TRS connectors can't short out on the top of the USB socket or ICSP header.
Closing Thoughts
I did toy with the idea of including some LEDS to show the triggers but instead adjusted the GPIO pins used to leave the block D8-D13 (plus GND) free to add them if required.
The board could be easily incorporated into a stack so the addition of an I2C display, an encoder or potentiometers would be quite possible on an additional shield on top.
It could even be used with a VS1053 synth shield for a fully complete Drum triggering unit.
Kevin
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