MIDI Keyboard

Dit artikel is overgenomen van mijn oude build blog uit 2018. Een deel van deze info zal mogelijk verouderd zijn, maar wel relevant om een project als deze mee op te zetten.

Veranderingen zijn: Evan Kale heeft zijn instructie video verwijderd. Gebruik zelf nu een 88 toetsen midi piano met gewogen toetsen en MiniLab ipv deze zelfbouw MIDI keyboard.

Years ago I had picked up an old Casio keyboard at a garage sale for little to no money. The sound was terrible and as far as I/O went it only had a headphone jack which meant you couldn’t even use Synthesia to learn some songs. So for years that keyboard collected dust until I stumbled across a YouTube video by Evan Kale explaining how turn a keyboard into a MIDI keyboard.

Items required

  • Any Arduino board (€2,50)
  • 2x SN74HC595 shift regulators (€0.70 for 10)
  • DIN5 port (Midi Port) (€3 for 10)
  • 6x 10k resistors
  • Breadboard
  • Protoboard and soldering iron
  • Evan Kale’s code (pull-down resistor version)
  • Several cups of coffee and a few aspirins

All the hard stuff

Follow this video and watch it in it’s entirely. If you get confused like I did, just watch it again and keep repeating it until you get it. As for the actual soldering, I ended up connecting jumper cables to my keyboard for easier breadboarding and eventually just soldered the jumper cables onto the protoboard housing the other components. The result is a horrible cable spaghetti but at least it worked. Later on I went ahead and a made a proper Arduino hat for it which looks a lot cleaner and actually allows me to remove the Arduino is necessary.

Edit: Evan Kale took his video down. here is an Instructable link: https://www.instructables.com/Add-MIDI-port-to-Keyboard/