Turning a thrift store Guitar Hero controller into a MIDI controller #CircuitPython #Metro @nickzoic
Nick Moore picked up a Guitar Hero type controller from the thrift store on impulse (for $7). It turns out to be a well-worn Playstation 2 controller, but not having a PS2, it became something else.
Handily there’s a CircuitPythonUSB MIDI library already. I’m a big fan of not writing C if I don’t have to and this library supports a lot of junkbox boards I already have, so that seems like an obvious choice. I just have to find one with enough I/O pins.
Just to begin with I need 5 digital I/O pins for the fret buttons and 2 for the strum buttons. It’d be nice to have a couple of analogue inputs for knobs, too.
I have a ‘beta’ adafruit Metro M4 Express lying around from some work I did a long time ago and it comes with USB-MIDI already on board so it seems like a good choice.
I’ve upgraded that to CircuitPython 7.1.1.
There’s also I2S support so it’s possible I could implement a Karplus-Strong synth right on the instrument with output to a standard guitar jack, but I’ll worry about that later.
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