MIDI Pedalboard
Published by theRod on Saturday, April 10, 2010
MIDI Pedalboard Project
I was fortunate enough to acquire a good pedalboard in working condition, coming from a mechanical tracker action organ. I opted for magnetic reed switches as the switching mechanism since the should guarantee a great number of actuations before going bad.
The project was divided in three parts: mechanical conversion of the pedalboard (mounting the switches), midi interface electronics and software, building a suitable organ bench.
Mechanical conversion
Before installing the switches the predal needed some minor repair:
The reed switches are to be mounted close to the pedals. I opted for the inelegant solution of having separate wooden supports for every group of 5 or 7 pedals, so in case of repair I need just to disassemble one.
The wooden supports are prepared with the correct dimensions of the pedals
The only reed switches I could find where LARGE, so I had to make an appropriate mounting procedure:
I then proceeded to mount a support on a group of pedals to test the system.
It works!
Since the system worked, I preceeded with the other supports:
And mounted the remaining magnets:
Cats are everywhere!
The almost-finished pedal:
An artistic view of the reed array:
The next step is the software:
The electronics are quite simple. I obviously mismatched the Microchip PIC to use, but with some little modifications to the software the problem was solved. Incredibly everything worked almost at the fist shot!
I the installed the pcbs in the newly made case for the mechanical parts of the pedalboard and started cabling the thing together:
And finish!
A nice view of the reeds al cabled:
Next step was thesting it all. It worked, at the first shot!
Next step was finishing the housing:
The pedal is now converted! we can move on to the
Organ Bench
An organ bench is not to difficult to build, so I decided to make my own.
For the moment the pedalboard is installed under my harpsichord, but the next project is a three manual console;
