unexpectedbowtie
Offline
Glasgow, Scotland.

Hello!

Forgive me if this isn't the right part of the forum.

It's been years since I made any chip music, and I'm looking to get back into it.

I have an arduinoboy that has MIDI DIN OUT and IN, and used to work fine with my old MIDI keyboard that had DIN out, running to the Gameboy DMG and MGB or whatever the software is called (memory fails me!)

Now, most of the controllers I can get my hands on are USB MIDI only - no DIN. The USBBoy project seems to have been sold out for a long time, and I'd rather not have to create my own.

What I'm thinking is, I could get a keyboard with MIDI USB out, and then use one of these USB to MIDI cables:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/PicknBuy-keyboa … midi+cable

along with an adaptor like so to change the USB gender:

http://www.amazon.com/Your-Cable-Store- … SHS9MXKZ4M

That theoretically should work, but wanted to see if that made sense to other folks before I dropped the cash on it.

Thank you!

Last edited by unexpectedbowtie (Jan 8, 2016 8:01 pm)

unexpectedbowtie
Offline
Glasgow, Scotland.

After some searching it appears that this won't work, as those cables need a computer to work. Boo. sad

jefftheworld
Offline
Toronto, Ontario, Canada

The most affordable solution I've seen requires something like a Raspberry Pi to act as the MIDI host.

unexpectedbowtie
Offline
Glasgow, Scotland.
jefftheworld wrote:

The most affordable solution I've seen requires something like a Raspberry Pi to act as the MIDI host.

That's an interesting idea.

I'm going to try routing the MIDI connection via my laptop and external soundcard to see if that works. Bit concerned about latency since I'll be feeding the audio back in to the laptop to record simultaneously, but will report back if it works.

dapperwrench
Offline

I rigged my set up to use Ableton on my PC as the master tempo and send MIDI out thru my audio interface to my arduinoboy to make my gameboys play in sync. is this what you are trying to accomplish?

mutilectric
Offline

There are some products that do exactly what you're after, but in my opinion all of these are too expensive for what they really do:

the products that I found that convert USB Midi to Din Midi are:
- Kenton MIDI USB Host

- Mode Machines CerebelUSB

And I thought iConnectivity had something as well.

yogi
Offline
Jelly Stone park, MD USA
jefftheworld wrote:

The most affordable solution I've seen requires something like a Raspberry Pi to act as the MIDI host.

Another option along this line, the STM32F4 Discovery board @ $15, the Discovery core board $9,  the dual MIDI board $8 and Midibox MIOS firmware. TK has implemented USB host mode, supporting Keyboards among other things.
http://midibox.org/forums/topic/18906-u … ent-165136
Yogi

kineticturtle
Offline
Matthew Joseph Payne

USBBoy is just a well made, fancy, Teensyboy, which you can DIY pretty easily and thus have USB MIDI: https://code.google.com/p/noizeinabox/wiki/TeensyBoy

tearauth
Offline
UK

I had this problem but i took the easiest solution of just buying a keyboard with with din midi out. got an oxygen 8 v2

unexpectedbowtie
Offline
Glasgow, Scotland.
dapperwrench wrote:

I rigged my set up to use Ableton on my PC as the master tempo and send MIDI out thru my audio interface to my arduinoboy to make my gameboys play in sync. is this what you are trying to accomplish?

Yup! That's what I ended up doing as well. smile

unexpectedbowtie
Offline
Glasgow, Scotland.

Thanks for all the help and suggestions! Bookmarking this thread to have a crack at DIYing my own Teensyboy.

For now though, I've managed to get things working using the following:

* USB Midi keyboard - plugged into a Macbook Pro
* External USB audio interface - with MIDI DIN out connected to the arduinoboy which is then connected to the DMG

The Macbook acts as a pass through from the USB keyboard to the audio interface.

I'm sure I could have set this up in my DAW, but it was complicated if you're not familiar with the channels etc. Instead, I used this free app called Midi Patchbay:

http://notahat.com/midi_patchbay/

Adzetko
Offline
Ardèche, France

Before reading the answers, I was thinking about the Teensyboy, and kineticturtle is mentioning it. Teensyboy seems to be the best and easiest way to make USB-midi works on a gameboy without the need of a computer.

Also, there's an internal Teensyboy shield project on this thread, but if I've correctly understood the OP, you'll have to wait some time before it will get released.

yogi
Offline
Jelly Stone park, MD USA
Adzetko wrote:

Before reading the answers, I was thinking about the Teensyboy, and kineticturtle is mentioning it. Teensyboy seems to be the best and easiest way to make USB-midi works on a gameboy without the need of a computer.

Also, there's an internal Teensyboy shield project on this thread, but if I've correctly understood the OP, you'll have to wait some time before it will get released.

I was thinking that Teensyboy didn't act as a USB Host but just as a Device?

Yogi

kineticturtle
Offline
Matthew Joseph Payne
yogi wrote:

I was thinking that Teensyboy didn't act as a USB Host but just as a Device?

Yogi

Oh, dang - you're totally right. Scratch what I said! You'd still need a USB host to make the Teensyboy work.

Adzetko
Offline
Ardèche, France
yogi wrote:
Adzetko wrote:

Before reading the answers, I was thinking about the Teensyboy, and kineticturtle is mentioning it. Teensyboy seems to be the best and easiest way to make USB-midi works on a gameboy without the need of a computer.

Also, there's an internal Teensyboy shield project on this thread, but if I've correctly understood the OP, you'll have to wait some time before it will get released.

I was thinking that Teensyboy didn't act as a USB Host but just as a Device?

Yogi

Ow, can anyone confirm this?
At least, you can add these shields to an arduino (or Teensy or RasPi) : http://www.hobbytronics.co.uk/usb-host-midi

Last edited by Adzetko (Jan 10, 2016 1:02 am)

yogi
Offline
Jelly Stone park, MD USA
Adzetko wrote:
yogi wrote:

I was thinking that Teensyboy didn't act as a USB Host but just as a Device?

Yogi

Ow, can anyone confirm this?
At least, you can add these shields to an arduino (or Teensy or RasPi) : http://www.hobbytronics.co.uk/usb-host-midi

Snap! that's brilliant. Will have to check these boards out some more; there are a few ideas that could use something like these smile
Yogi