Software program developer and musician Maido Käära has constructed a MIDI controller to increase the pliability of a Dirtywave M8 Tracker — vastly rising the variety of inputs out there to its consumer with a “knob field.”
“It is fairly small and doesn’t have a whole lot of buttons,” Käära explains of the M8 in a weblog submit delivered to our consideration by Adafruit, “so working with the gadget wants a whole lot of key combos to maneuver by completely different screens and choices. Getting the hold of the workflow is definitely fairly simple, however the interface is fairly restricted if you wish to carry out or simply jam with the gadget.
“Thankfully it helps MIDI In so if I’d have a MIDI controller I may use that as a substitute to manage the gadget. Sadly the value level of the grid controllers is fairly steep in order common I made a decision to construct one myself.”
Powered by CircuitPython on a Raspberry Pi Pico, this MIDI knob field presents a giant improve to a Dirtywave M8 Tracker. (📷: Maido Käära)
Whereas Käära had initially wished to construct one thing complicated — “one thing with a display,” he explains, “and a rotary encoder that can be utilized to implement a menu for the system” — a number of rounds of prototyping noticed the scope lowered to a knob field, designed in SketchUp and 3D printed for prototyping in addition to manufacturing of the completed mannequin. “Prototyping with a 3D printer by simply printing out the faceplate turned out to be very helpful,” Käära explains. “You’ll be able to actually get the texture of the format when you’ll be able to truly mess around with the gadget as a substitute of simply taking a look at a render.”
The completed design makes use of a Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller board operating a CircuitPython program to ship MIDI messages over USB, managed by a grid of 12 rotary potentiometers linked to a 16-channel analog multiplexer and mapped to undefined MIDI Steady Controller (CC) messages. These then feed again into the Dirtywave M8 Tracker over a tip-ring-sleeve (TRS) cable — with the scale of the field saved compact sufficient to not dwarf the M8.
The complete challenge write-up, with supply code, is obtainable on Käära’s web site.
