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Wireless Midi


Charlotte_R

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Hi all,

I'm currently working on a project to control a lighting desk through movement of a dancer and I was wondering if anyone could suggest a good way to get midi commands from the dancer to the desk?

The problem I have is size. I need a solution that is small enough to fit on a dancer, so preferably something that is beltpack sized or not much bigger. I'd like it to read in a resistance and then convert it to midi, transmit it wirelessly and spew it out to a lighting desk.

My initial thoughts are to use an arduino to read in the resistance values and convert to midi timecode at mic levels. Then send this to a standard beltpack and receive it out as audio from the receiver. Then, assuming that it is at the correct signal level from the receiver, into the desk.

Would this work? Can anyone suggest a better solution?

 

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Why have anything attached to the dancer? You could use an Xbox Kinect sensor and the software from vvvv.org to create a gesture-based midi controller. If you need to cover a wider area than what the Kinect can handle, I’ve used vvvv and a modified webcam to track infra red markers and then used this information to drive some projected effects. Using a clever bit of maths I could have the projected effect follow the infrared markers quite closely. It should be straight forward to adapt this technique to generate midi commands.
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If you want to stick with your original method, I would use an arduino at both ends and use a pair of the 2.4GHz modules e.g. NRF24L01 to send data between them. Then the arduino at the receive end can output the midi.

Midi timecode SMPTE is not a digital signal as it is a modulated audio frequency, it would be complicated to generate this with an arduino.

An example of the wireless link is herehttps://howtomechatronics.com/tutorials/arduino/arduino-wireless-communication-nrf24l01-tutorial/

 

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If you’re sold on the Arduino route then take a look at the Wemos D1 mini Pro. Tiny, programmable in Arduino ide with a new board file, built in battery charging, built in WiFi, option of an external antenna or an on board one by default.

I’ve just got one working this week taking Artnet over WiFi and converting it to WS2811 to drive a load of led’s on an Artnet controlled poi project. Not a huge learning curve from Arduino, just watch the pin numbering as they’re not 100% the same, but there are plenty of resources out there to explain.

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Midi timecode SMPTE is not a digital signal as it is a modulated audio frequency,...

 

Actually the OP only mentioned 'midi timecode' which is a straight forwards MIDI signal: a 31.25k baud serial stream. So that really wouldn't work as a source for a radio link.

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Midi timecode SMPTE is not a digital signal as it is a modulated audio frequency,...

 

Actually the OP only mentioned 'midi timecode' which is a straight forwards MIDI signal: a 31.25k baud serial stream. So that really wouldn't work as a source for a radio link.

 

Mmm, that's why I thought she meant SMPTE version which would potentially travel over radio.

 

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Rather than the complication of sending midi wirelessly, why not do Arduino at both ends and just send data between?

If you choose to use a Teensy at the receive end with a separate module to handle the wireless connectivity then the Teensy can be set to appear to a usb connected computer as a USB midi device. Really easy to do and lots of example sketches out there. Use a Wemos d1 mini on the dancer for its’ size, onboard WiFi and battery charging capability.

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