The MIDI Buddy Page

Home Craigs Pages Heathers Pages

Sept 16, 2014

I recently finished a project I call my MIDI Buddy which is micro controller based MIDI synthesizer that can be built for around $90. I've written a MIDI Buddy article for Nuts and Volts Magazine. See the February 2015 issue. This article will be my 61st publication. If you are interested, you can read the article here.

	The finished and packaged MIDI Buddy. Two joysticks are used to navigate the menuing system which controls the MIDI Buddy.
	The MIDI Buddy was a one off build so it is built on a breadboard using point to point wiring. Upper left is the Teensy 3.1 micro controller which is the brains of MIDI Buddy. A 16x2 LCD displays menus and status values. The SD card interface supports cards with up to 2 GBytes of storage. The two joysticks below the LCD drive the user interface. Circuitry for the MIDI input is on the lower right.
	The bottom of the MIDI Budy breadboard. The gray box in the upper middle is the LCD contrast adjustment trimmer. The middle of the breakboard contains the Fluxamasynth shield containing the SAM-2195 single chip synthesizer.
	Left side of the MIDI Buddy which shows the access to the Teensy controller and the SD card. MIDI Buddy is powered by a USB power supply connected to the Teensy controller via a USB cable.
	Right side of MIDI Buddy shows the MIDI input and stereo audio output.

Schematic of the MIDI Buddy

The MIDI Buddy firmware is available here.

Home Craigs Pages Heathers Pages