MIDI File Player

Midiboy
1

Will the badass BLOKAS crew be making any more sketches for Midiboy?

A great use case that would be a simple MIDI file player.

With the OLED display and buttons, it makes more sense than using midihub or pisound even.

I’ve scoured the web for a piece of hardware that just plays a midi file from an sd card and have found no promising leads. There are really old ones with floppys and complicated UI, fragments of DIY projects, and specialty overpriced ones designed for organ players.

It could just be a list of midi files you can scroll and then the buttons are play and stop, shuffle. It could be more complicated with settings and what not, but because midiboy has 6 buttons a dead simple player may be possible.
Thoughts?

1 Like
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The storage might be an issue - as Midiboy doesn’t have an SD card or other external storage, and the ATmega328P only has 32kB flash memory, which must store the bootloader, as well as the firmware code itself. Some songs may not even manage to fit in the memory available…

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Old iPhone, example 3GS or similar…

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Thanks for responses. I forgot about the lack of sd card.
I will probably go the old apple device route. There are some promising modular options, but I would like something with a big easy tactile surface.

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did you ever sort any solution out for playing midi files? i have been looking for something small to fit my needs forever that will play midi files. you would think someone has something that is small that will play midi files and send it back out the midi out at least. ideally i would like to be able to send midi files out multiple midi outs.

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Wouldn’t it be possible to replace the midiboy USB port by a small USB port in which you can put a USB-stick instead ?

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That might be possible, but it’d require writing the code to host the USB stick which can take a lot of effort.

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Without a SD or usb-stick to store some midi-data, the midiboy doesn’t seem to be very useable for midi.
What would it take to replace that USB-port by a small (usb-stick) sized usb port ?
Do/can they fit in the same printboard holes ?

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It depends on what you intend to do with MIDI - if to simply play MIDI files, then yes, it’d be problematic. For performing MIDI effects and transformations it’s quite capable and very customizable.

The ports would not be pin layout compatible.

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Using the midiboy (as stand alone hardware) to send sysex-files to my older type of synths was the initial intention, to use midiboy.

I still would like to have that possible. (I have more of Blokas stuff in use, yet…)
I don’t have the skills and time to look how this can be made possible (neither hardware or software), but I can deliver some ideas. :wink:

Maybe that small USB connector can be (for now) placed on the lower printboard near the battery and connected with cables.
(a new design can have that with some connectors, so not much would neeed a re-design)

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Would love a midi player. Its amazing. If a company would make and sell a simple midi player that takes a sd card, it would do incredibly well.