What board to make midi?

hey everyone !
i’m looking to do midi merger, splitters, usb hosts and annoying things like that !
i know that i can do that type of things with arduinos, but mergers etc will be difficult if i don’t have an arduino mega. i’ve heard about teensy’s board
what boards are the bests/cheapest to do that ?
is there code to do that, that already exist ? if you did that, what did you use ? do you have some tips ?

2 Likes

You can make usb hosts easily and midi merge is also quite straightforward. I use an old pic based design but I can’t find the link at the moment.
Morocco Dave has my fav projects in this area

As for boards; the teensys are fun but for value I’m favouring the esp32. As easy to use as an Arduino but smarter and great for audio.

3 Likes

thanks for the site, where do you found these : Hobbytronics USB Host Board v2.3

3 Likes

A site worth perusal.

2 Likes

it’s a uk site, i’m from france, do you know some alternative ? because shipping will actually be higher than the article

2 Likes

Excellent point. In that case I’d look into using an esp32 as a usb host and merger or possibly even a raspberry pi Pico which I think has usb covered and is fast enough for a midi merge.

If you dig into the hobbytronics site the schematic, PIC required , code and how to easily load it is all there so perhaps that’s a route.

I’ll have a dig around for other projects. If the mega is too pricey then look at building using just the AT chip

Dave is a good starting point there.

3 Likes

Midi merge using a pic mcu…

1 Like

I think many people would suggest a Teensy (there are some interesting looking MIDI boards available on Tindie for example) and increasingly the Pico looks more viable for this kind of thing too. I’ve not used the Teensy myself, but there are a number of Pico projects on my site (e.g. this one: Raspberry Pi Pico Multi MIDI Router – Part 3 – Simple DIY Electronic Music Projects). I’m still deciding on the performance implications of attempting this kind of thing in Micro/CircuitPython :slight_smile:

I’ve summarised everything I know about Arduino and USB MIDI here: Arduino and USB MIDI – Simple DIY Electronic Music Projects

Kevin

5 Likes