Building a MIDI console with Arduino

I have recently been overwhelmed with what can be done with Audio on Linux. The DAWs, like Ardour, are not only free but also so extremely powerful you can actually do lots with it. I don't know if it would stand against the big guys but knowing there's no limitation for tracks, buses and the use of plugins it seems like the sound editing capabilities are only limited by the CPU power. Or are they?

Hardware to be made

In point of fact I am not a professional. I did take some piano lessons (my mum was a piano teacher and I was forced to follow in her footsteps for 5 years that I would rather forget) but beyond that and a few years of learning the theory of music I have no idea what I have set out myself to do. So what is it exactly that I'd like to do?

Well, it is not all that difficult. I think it is far more enjoyable to tweak all the knobs in a DAW if you have... welll.. knobs :D Moving them all with a mouse is just such a pain in the ass. So I have decided to make some hardware that will allow me to control the DAW with physical knobs.

Following are some basic ideas that I have that will allow me to complete my mission:

• Every mixer console has a slider for volume - I need one of those
• Every mixer console has a number of knobs that can be turned from left to right that will then change some parameter in the DAW - configurable. I need at least 8 if not 12 per channel
• I need a set of buttons that will control solo, mute and record per channel. I don't feel like pressing a key combination to achieve any of those
• I need a section that will have a master volume control as well as a set of knobs to control the output parameters. At least 8-10 for that purpose.

That brings me to a whopping 13 potentiometers per channel plus 3-5 push buttons and 11 for the master control plus some 10+ push buttons. No microcontroller can handle that amount of analog inputs alone. This is why I came up with the idea of modular design that will help me accomplish my goal (some time in the unforeseeable future :D).

The grand design

I don't want to be limited by the number of inputs at any stage. That'd be ridiculous. So instead of making an all-in-one design I am going for a modular, expand-as-you-go design that will allow me to basically define two types of modules:

• A channel module that will pretty much be a device on its own, handling all the analog and digital inputs and being an I2C slave that will allow a master to read the state of all the knobs at once
• A master module capable of recognizing all the connected slaves and sending their values over MIDI as they change

Each module will run its own ATMega382p (Arduino) with the necessary I2C hardware (like additional ADCs over I2C or I/O expanders if I choose to go with encoders rather than potentiometers). That way every module will be a slave and the master can ready the values of each control at a time of its choosing leaving the combining and transposition to MIDI commands to the master controller. Cool, ain't it?

Let the fun begin

So here I am, 3:40am, with that crazy idea in mind, putting it all on the blog. I really would like to make a big console for 32 channels but I think I'll start with 1 or 2 channels and the master to validate if the design scales.

Have fun! I know I will!