#midicontrol

First up, I feel I should address the current state of the Let’s Videogame youtube channel I run with my cousin (www.youtube.com/letsvideogame ).  At the beginning of summer we recorded a Let’s Play of the game The Matrix Path of Neo.  We have all of the audio and video recorded, but not long after we started posting episodes my computer started BSODing – at first it seemed like when I was doing resource intensive tasks, but over time it kept happening, seemingly at random, and I was never able to pinpoint the cause.

It’s obviously a concern to me, but when you don’t have very much time to USE your PC you really don’t want to spend that limited time FIXING your PC (especially when you work in IT and spend all day fixing PCs). There was also another fact lingering in the back of my head – my PC is kind of old. Despite the specs being okay (Quad core, 8g ram), and having upgraded/replaced almost every component in the machine over time, it is still, in some way, the same PC I started building back in 2007.

All of this is in addition to the biggest nail in my productivity coffin – the death of my father. On August 14th my dad unexpectedly passed away…  I’m not going go into detail about that here, but as you can imagine, it flipped my world upside down and shutdown any extracurricular activities I was involved in.

The flip-side to that horrible event is that I will soon be receiving a little bit of money from the whole ordeal.  With this money I plan on building a new PC from the ground up, and it’ll also be funding the midi controller I’m working on.

Building the computer is very much a non-project for me (last ground-up I did took maybe 2hrs?), so I won’t go into any details on that.

First order of business when I get my new computer will be to finish the Path of Neo let’s play videos. I feel like I’m starting to become one of those people who’s all talk and never finishes anything, so while I’m not making any promises, I’m sick of sitting on unfinished work and am looking to change that. I’ve identified that if I want those videos to see the light-of-day, I need to sit down and crank them out until every single one is edited, rendered, and uploaded for scheduled release on youtube. Previously I was trying to edit 3-4 videos at a time once a week, and it just wasn’t working.

I’ll then move on to my Midi controller. Because it’s more of a side-project, and I’m really excited to work on it, I’ll probably be building it during the time I’m supposed to be in my PON editing blackout. I won’t, however, start using it to make music until PON is fully off my docket.

Next up will be MUSIC - Looking back at the library of music I’ve released made me realize that I produced the best results when in my music production class where I worked towards a clear goal (30mins of music) and had a deadline. So with PON off my mind and a cool new piece of music-tech to play with, I want to dive in and try my hand at making a full-length album. It’ll be the first time I try working on a lengthy music project (instead of just one song at a time) since the 2012 demo, and will be pretty similar in sound/feel to that. I’ve mentioned that I was never fully happy with how that demo turned out, so my plan is to revise, expand, and polish that material into something I’m truly proud of.  If I stick with it, I expect this to be my primary creative outlet for the next year, and should hopefully have something release around this time 2014.

Here’s a bullet list of some of the details I ironed out:

I wanted to have 2 buttons for the drums and hi hat, for rolls and fast playing, when I wrote that out I didn’t think about how this would increase the amount of inputs needed in the arduino (which I found out had a 12 input limit) – So I conformed and modified my design to fit within 12 inputs.

Below is a new mockup that I spent a bit more time on – in terms of button placement and layout this is more or less exactly how I want the final product to look:

I studied the wiring diagram provided on the instructables page and modified it to cut out the use of potentiometers/analog inputs, since I won’t be using these. This also showed me that If I wanted to use a foot-pedal to open/close the hi hat I could potentially use one of these analog inputs, but once again I don’t know how I’d go about getting the software working for this.

I read through all of the programming stuff which initially had me really worried – but it appears all of the hard work is done, and I just have to load pre-packaged libraries onto the arduino, which I feel I can definitely manage.

An added benefit to conforming to 12 inputs means I can more or less follow the instructable to a T without having to figure much else out.

Detailed Shopping List:

 Arduino - $25

I need to do a little more research on Arduino, but this arduino clone looks like it’ll work just fine for what I need: http://www.dfrobot.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=838#.Ul_o29I3s7E

  Buttons - $33

Haven’t fully decided on colors yet, but buying 11 buttons through the following site will run me about $33 with shipping: http://www.focusattack.com/obsf-24-pushbutton/

Soldering Station - $25

Another thing I need to research a little more before making a final decision, but this is one of the soldering stations I’ve looked into purchasing for this. http://www.amazon.com/Soldering-Station-Features-Continuously-Variable/dp/B0029N70WM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1382021618&sr=8-1&keywords=Soldering+station

But at the same time I might just skip this expense since I technically have an iron that will work…

Rough total cost:  $60-$85 for the main components (depending on if I get a new soldering iron) – this is not including things like the spools of wire I’ll need or the enclosure I’ll end up putting  everything in.  I also have to take into account things like a drill and dremel bits that I’m sure I’ll need to ream out the holes for all the buttons.

If I commit to not replacing my soldering iron, it looks like I should be able to get away with spending under $80 to get this completed. This is a little more than I thought I’d spend initially – mainly because the buttons ended up being a bit pricier than I expected – but still totally worth it.

 All in all I'm pretty stoked! It seems is all coming together quite nicely!

The next thing I want to nail down is an enclosure - I plan on making some 24mm circles out of paper that I can use to represent the arcade buttons - this will let me take them into a place like a thrift store so I can get an accurate representation of how much space the buttons will take up on any potential enclosure I find.