DIY MIDI knob Controller

Question

What would it take for me to build something similar to the mockup below?

Answer 1

An Arduino is a great choice if you want to dabble in a little DIY MIDI. I've got a Mega here that I'm building a foot controller around for some outboard MIDI gear. There are plenty of libraries out there already for sending MIDI CC and PC messages from Arduino. And there are some USB shield modules already that make it easy to interface with your PC.

One of the big benefits of using an Arduino for this stuff is it has built-in encoders that take a differential voltage signal from a standard potentiometer and convert it in to a digital value you can sample from your code. Most of the Arduino models have 5-10 of these analog sampling lines on them. Makes it way easier to build this sort of stuff when you don't have to figure out how to do the analog value sampling or fuss with digital rotary encoders.

There's a great tutorial on RogueScience's site that walks through building a MIDI-sending Arduino project with a MIDI-USB bridge and everything. It assumes very near to zero experience with Arduino and programming.

Answer 2

I'm almost finished a midi controller using one of these.

http://halemicro.com/Products/Products.html

Answer 3

There are MIDI controller kits you can use. I haven't used this, so I can't recommend it, but it seems to fit the bill:

http://highlyliquid.com/midi-controllers/midi-cpu/

There are also midi kits for the Arduino project, but it seems like overkill:

http://tomscarff.110mb.com/products_prices.htm