Beat Maker project

This is a project I've had in the works for a while. Right now it is called the Beat Maker. Pretty unoriginal, but it will get a proper name at some point. Sydney Jr., after the flesh and blood drummer in my band, is high in the running. The idea is to have an interface which produces midi drum patterns in a semi-random fashion. The main controls are four slide pots which adjust the pattern in each of the four channels, kick drum, snare/hi-hat, toms and cymbals. Each channel also has a switch which enables programming on the pattern. Programming is controlled by three momentary switches and one regular pot. There is one additional regular pot which controls the tempo.

The hardware is essentially complete. The housing is some sort of sewing box or tackle box I got from Value Village for two bucks. The knobs were also Value Village purchases. I used a rotary tool to create holes in the bottom and fit them onto the controls. Controls consists of 4x 2.5K slide pots (the small heads), 2x 5K pots (the large heads), 4x toggle switches and 3x momentary switches. Here is a close up of the main control panel.


I also have a power switch, midi jack and midi by-pass switch mounted on the side.

The guts are powered by an Arduino. The latest version of the firmware can be found on github. Here is a shot of the inside of the case.


The circuit board that is connected to the Arduino will have a programmed ATmega168 mounted in the empty socket once the firmware is complete. The controls, leds and midi port are all connected directly to the circuit board. The pins of the socket are then broken out to male headers on the board which I've connected to the Arduino with some cables I made. The only remaining part of the hardware is the power supply. While developing and testing it is powered through the usb.

The firmware as of this writing is functional but hasn't been tweaked. I will post some video of it in action soon.