With the other posts about a MIDI file player that uses the SD cards,
I thought I might introduce the MMD group to a do-it-yourself (DIY)
project that can play and record MIDI files. I feel that this
hardware and software would be perfect for integrating a MIDI player
into a band organ.
It normally outputs the MIDI data to standard MIDI ports, USB, or
Network OSC, but can also be configured to output the MIDI data
directly to a output driver card using the DOUT card. The DOUT cards
would have to be beefed up to support the current required to drive
directly the magnets found in a band organ.
The software is called MIDIO128 V3 and uses MIDIbox hardware that
can be bought for under 80 USD total. The hardware is designed to be
used on over 50 different MIDI projects, which can be confusing to the
first time viewer. I got involved in using this product because of my
interest with MIDI on pipe organs, and I didn't want to spend as much
as over $300 for a ready-made MIDI file player.
The basic functional description of the "MIDIO128 V3" project is at
http://www.ucapps.de/midio128.html but it is very out of date, as
of January 2013, since it doesn't talk about the record, repeat, tempo,
and mapping functions that was added a few months ago.
To use the player/recorder you have to add the 2x20 LCD display,
"Control Surface" buttons and encoder knob and SD card hardware to the
MBHP_CORE_LPC17 module. It has a lot of connectivity options for a
low cost unit that can't be found anywhere else in one package.
Pete Knobloch
Tempe, Arizona
[ The MIDIbox project, an open source modular DIY framework, is
[ described at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIDIbox -- Robbie
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