The 6 Biggest Mistakes while Building MIDI CONTROLLERS

hello my nerd musician friend in this video i'm going to talk about the six biggest mistakes that makers do while building midi controllers hello and welcome to the nerd musician my name is gustavo silvera and here we talk mainly about how to build midi controllers i have built a lot of them and i have hundreds of students that have built hundreds of them and i made a lot of mistakes and i still do and also having all those students i know what is the main mistakes that people do while making midi controllers so this video here is intended for you to stop wasting a lot of your time while making these mistakes a video that i wish i had seen before i started making mine so let's get it started so first choosing the wrong arduino but what an arduino even is an arduino is a board that has a microcontroller that transforms information from the physical world into the digital world you can get the press of a button or the turn of a potentiometer and make it into digital information and with this information you can send midi for example so press a button and send a midi note and the arduino is by far the most popular board for making midi controllers but there are several different arduino boards so which one to choose i've already made a video specific just about that you can check it here but what i can tell to you is that you need to think about a couple things how many components you want in your project does the board need to be tiny and you need to choose a board that is midi class compliant or plug and play so depending on the number of components you have you need to choose an arduino with a certain number of pins or inputs an arduino uno will have only 13 digital inputs while the arduino mega will have about 50 something however there's a trick that you can use a small board with a multiplexer which is a component that increases the number of inputs of an arduino so with that in mind i like to use the arduino pro micro the arduino pro micro is tiny is midi class compliant and with a multiplexer i can connect more than 100 of components in this arduino but if for whatever reason you need more pins in a tiny board i highly recommend the teensy family boards they're also tiny they are midi class compliant and have more pins than the arduino pro micro so why not go always for the team clc because the arduino pro micro cost about three dollars and the teensy cost about 12. and if you live in the united states or europe that might not be a big deal but if you live in countries like i live like brazil the teensy can get really expensive but also besides making a final project you always want to prototype before to test your ideas and for that you need an arduino that you can use jumpers because with that you don't need to solder anything so an arduino uno and a breadboard will be great for you to prototype your project so to summarize my favorite arduino for prototyping is the arduino uno plus a breadboard and for final projects are the arduino pro micro and maybe plus a multiplexer and the tnc lc so second big mistake using wires in big projects and i am so guilty of that as you can see in this video here i even put a video on youtube about my biggest fail this huge project that i tried to do with wires and i failed completely using wires can get really messy they are not really reliable and it's really hard to debug to find where the problem is if something happens and the bigger the project gets the more problems you can have a way to avoid wires is creating your own printed circuit board pcbs can eliminate completely the use of wires in your circuit but for that you need to use a software to design your pcb in the computer and then you can export the files to a company to get a really professional board and i just released a brand new course the kycad pcb design where i teach how to make pcbs from scratch to production this way you can get super reliable pcbs that also look super professional and it will make you to get rid of wires forever besides assembling a circuit with a pcb is way way faster another mistake i see a lot is people trying to start too big and the reason that i don't advise to start big is that it's really hard to debug to find the problem in bigger projects and believe me you're going to have problems i always have them my midi controllers never work in the first time but because i have been doing this for years i have enough experience and knowledge to find the problem quickly and solve this and just make my midi controller work fast so it's better for you if you start small and learn how to debug to find a problem first in smaller projects so what i think you should do let's say if you want to make a project with 100 potentiometers which is a lot first make a prototype with just a couple potentiometers let's say three and make them work for making a midi controller with that many potentiometers you need multiplexers so first make a prototype with just one multiplexer and then make sure you can use more than one multiplexer like two after you can make a prototype with a couple potentiometers and two multiplexers now you can go to your final project so think like that for any project you wanna do first create a proof of concept i always make a prototype with all the components you're gonna use in the final project but with just a few units another mistake is not using the appropriate tools for making your midi controller and they are basic tools but you need to have them you need to have a good soldering iron wire cutter wire stripper [Music] shoulder sucker the solder sucker is important to undo your soldering mistakes and a multimeter to debug your circuit that's the bare minimum and get good quality stuff and i put here in the description where you can buy this gear [Music] and the fifth mistake is not planning ahead not prototyping even if your project is small you should prototype first and what i mean about prototyping is using an arduino and a breadboard where you can try things out without committing to soldering this will allow you to know if your code is working if your circuit is actually wired correctly you don't want to learn that your circuit is wrong after you solder it you don't want to redo things you want to solder things knowing that it's going to work if you do it correctly so i advise you first to sketch a circuit on fritzing fritzing is a software that you can make the layout of your circuit in the breadboard just like you do in real life and then you can go for an arduino uno for example and a breadboard and jumpers and connect things and program and see if that's working of course if your project is too big you don't need to put everything there but at least the proof of concept you need to do and if you didn't put everything in the prototype make sure that you know what you were doing and the last mistake is trying to learn only through youtube tutorials instructables and etc that's how i learned actually and took me about 6 months to build my first midi controller it's really hard to learn how to build midi controllers only copying and pasting codes from other people without the proper guidance so for that i created the course the making music with arduino where i teach the step by step of how you can build your midi controllers using buttons potentiometers rotary encoders motorized faders displays leds yadda yadda yadda so it's a super complete course that will allow you to build your first midi controllers just in a couple days less than a week and you don't even need to learn how to code i teach you how to adapt my code in the fastest way possible so put in the comments below which mistakes have you done and give a like to this video if you liked it and subscribe if you didn't do yet so see you in the next video ciao [Music] you

Channel: Nerd Musician

Views: 13,936

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Id: u9fmr28CRqc

Length: 9min 37sec (577 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 15 2021