A Steel Drum/Pan MIDI controller using the Pi Pico.
A MIDI controler to create a steelpan MIDI controller that was easy and accessable. Because of this goal it lacks various features like velocity sensitivity.
I got this idea while playing in a parent steal drum band. Not owning a pan myself I was wondering how I could practice. Knowing I had the pico, and CircuitPython, this idea was born.
Turns out CircuitPython was not fast enough (or at least my implementation in python) as there was a noticeable delay between when the pad was hit and my computer would play the MIDI note. so I ported the code to C and the pico SDK, and here we are today.
The prototype folder contains the original CircuitPython implementation.
You will need to build some sort of controller. The one I used consist of
- Mallets with a metal head (I used a ball of foil) that connect to the ground of the pico
- A sheet of cardboard with pads of foil, of which each is connected to one of the GPIO pins
- Copy the uf2 file to the pi pico when it is in boot mode
None yet.
This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE.md file for details
FWIW, it is really nothing special.