[LAU] Audio and Bluetooth

[Harry van Haaren]

On Sun, Feb 16, 2014 at 10:48 PM, Clifford Dunn <beatleboy07 at gmail.com>wrote:

> I'm currently building a foot pedal controller. I have an Arduino
> Diecimila that is going to transmit the simple on/off as well as
> continuous controller info.

Cool, and nice project.


> My thought is to make it a bluetooth
> device and have wireless communication with my computer.

I'd advise against it: I know perhaps the "wireless" thing is nice on
stage, but in the end
a cable you can (usually anway!) rely on, while with bluetooth, I wouldn't
be too sure.

I'll suggest two options:
A) Get a Arduino Uno (so you have the flashable USB chip), and make it
appear as a class compliant USB MIDI device. ALSA will pick it up, and
automatically list it as a MIDI I/O device. Done.

B) Use a hardware MIDI output from the Arduino: setting the serial baudrate
to 31250 (midi baud rate), and writing the bytes you want using
Serial.write() does the job. The hardware MIDI output is very simple:
http://arduino.cc/en/uploads/Tutorial/MIDI_bb.png

Depending on if you interface has hardware MIDI I/O, B might be OK, and
saves buying an Arduino Uno. That said, the simplicity of just plug & play
USB MIDI anywhere is awesome!

HTH, -Harry

PS: I have python script to read serial data using the "PySerial" module,
and turn that into ALSA MIDI somewhere... leftovers from a similar project
:) That allows using the Decimilia as a USB MIDI device, so long as the
python script is running. Note that its obviously not ideal: with Python
being rubbish for speed, and its a very non-portable solution since the
Py-ALSA-MIDI / PySerial modules aren't common.
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