Arduino : sending MIDI up the USB

Question

I'm interested in making an Arduino based MIDI controller to talk to my computer. Looking at other examples of Arduino MIDI (eg. http://itp.nyu.edu/physcomp/Labs/MIDIOutput), they all seem to wire up a dedicated 5 pin DIN. Which makes sense as this is the original cable to connect keyboards, expanders and sequencers together.

However, I want to send MIDI to my PC. A 5-pin DIN is just going to have to be plugged into a conversion box which connects to my PC via USB. And I already have a USB cable to connect my Arduino to my PC. So why can't I just use this?

I'm assuming what would stop me is that these conversion boxes all come with drivers which know how to handle the signal coming in over USB. Whereas, say, a virtual synth on my computer wouldn't expect or know how to handle raw bytes coming in in via the serial port. So is there a standard / free equivalent to these drivers that I could use for my own project? Or, if not, what would it take to write one? Where could I find out more about this?

Answer 1

Take a look at this article (in particular the MIDI driver).

Answer 2

Hey! You maybe want to checkSpikenzielabs "Serial - MIDI Converter" out, which looks exactly the right thing you're looking for. It converts incomming serial data into MIDI data. So on Arduino side just send serial data as usal, and receive MIDI data on PC side:

http://www.spikenzielabs.com/SpikenzieLabs/Serial%5FMIDI.html

Answer 3

I found it was easier to just embed a cheap ($6) MIDI-USB interface right into my Arduino projects.

Here's how: http://shiftmore.blogspot.com/2010/01/quick-and-dirty-arduino-midi-over-usb.html

There's also some pics of an old calculator I turned into an Arduino USB-MIDI controller there. http://shiftmore.blogspot.com/2009/12/calculator-midi-usb-controller.html

hope that helps.

Answer 4

oops.. that link was to the calculator project..

Here's the link to the usb-midi part: http://shiftmore.blogspot.com/2010/01/quick-and-dirty-arduino-midi-over-usb.html

Nate