Midignusbuino

The Midignusbuino is a plug-n-play USB-MIDI device that can be used to build MIDI controllers. Most operating systems have built in MIDI support, so no drivers are needed, and almost any music software understands MIDI… It is built on the Gnusbuino platform, is more or less compatible with the Arduino environment and can be programmed through the Arduino IDE

Building / Installing

Hardware schematics and source code are in the SV repository at http://gnusb.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/gnusb/branches/gnusbuino/

You can either download the two folders and add their contents to the corresponding folders in your Arduino working directory, or you can pull the latest version directly through svn.

- cd "the/path/to/Arduino/"    (for me on a Mac it is cd ~/Users/me/Documents/Arduino)
- svn co https://gnusb.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/gnusb/branches/gnusbuino/hardware
- svn co https://gnusb.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/gnusb/branches/gnusbuino/libraries

later on, you can always update to the latest version by typing

- svn update

Some notes on etching and building the circuit

PCB layout and Eagle files are in harware/gnusbuino/pcb/

USB resistors should be 68 Ohms and 1k6 Ohms, the other resistor values are not critical Zeners should be 3.3-3.6V Electrolytic capacitor max 10uF (as per USB spec)

Burning the bootloader

The Gnusbuino board does not have a SPI interface connector (as you'd only need it once for burning the bootloader - afterwards you can program it directly over USB). So it is a good idea to burn the bootloader BEFORE you solder the chip on. Reopen the Arduino Application and you should see the Midignusbuino in the board menu:

Use your favorite AVR programmer and chose "Burn Bootloader" from the Tools menu. I normally use a Gnusb-Prog, a modified gnusb to flash AVR chips, see here: http://www.anyma.ch/blogs/research/2011/08/19/gnusb-procreation/

Programming the Midignusbuino

Plug in the Midignusbuino and press the reset button. The yellow LED lights up, indicating that we are in bootloader mode. Write your Arduino sketch and hit upload as with any normal Arduino. When the upload is finished, both LEDs light up for a short time, then the yellow led goes out and the green one stays on. This means the Gnusbuino has successfully enumerated as a standard MIDI-USB device and is ready to use. On the Mac, you can use the "System Profiler" application (in /Application/Utilities/ ) to check if the gnusb is really there: