A slightly different midi organ

David Marks · Posted: Tue Jun 27, 2006 5:57 pm Post subject: A slightly different midi organ

Hello everybody,
Just thought I would be cheeky and send in the first posting. Cheeky because I am very amateur and very new to this business.
I am building (and designing as I go along ) a small fairground type organ controlled by Midi. I am using a Palm M130 as a player with ITTY MIDI software. The decoder board is a home brew (designed in Germany by Thorsten Klose). At present it has just 64 outputs. The windchest is based on the small ex Amstrad solenoids which just about do the job. I have built the chest vertically with three “shelves” of 40 solenoids.

The cover is clear acrylic and quick release with LED’s over each solenoid so that I can see what is going on and get inside quickly if I need to! At present I have just one chromatic rank of 32 open flutes from middle C upwards. 11 accompaniment and 8 bass are under construction . I am planning a rank of counter melody and have acquired a nice heavy glockenspiel from eBay. The vertical windchest (with flexible tubing to the pipes) means that I can shuffle everything around easily to get a decent layout (or to add more pipes)
I am interested in having some animated figures controlled by a midi channel (and of course some percussion). I would like the whole thing to be really interesting to children and since I can’t carve anyway I am disembowelling some furry toys for this purpose. Eventually I hope it can be interactive (e.g. An infra red remote to allow children to (say) play the triangle)
I recently took the part built prototype to the Rollcutter Rendezvous in Kent (A splendid event) and a lot of people showed interest in the design. (perhaps they were just too polite to laugh !!). Thought I would post this in case anyone else is interested . May I finish by wishing this new forum every success.

Dave Stubbs · Posted: Tue Jun 27, 2006 8:31 pm Post subject: MIDI

Hi David.

Thanks for your posting!

That sounds like a great project!

As someone who has played with MIDI over the years, I am intrigued by the 'Palm M130 as a player with ITTY MIDI software'.

I assume that it is one of those Palm computers. I must admit that I have never looked at them in any detail so I am curious to know how you extract the MIDI from it. I assume (again) that it has USB, to which you can connect a USB to MIDI adaptor (like the 'MIDI UNO')? Or is it some custom gadget?

Regards, Dave Stubbs

Bob Essex · Posted: Tue Jun 27, 2006 9:04 pm Post subject:

I can't resist the urge to post on this one!

I too (thanks to David Marks) have used Palm Pilots as MIDI players. The software is downloaded from ITTY MIDI, and a small modification when added to the serial plug - a resistor and a diode - lets it drive a MIDI decoder board in the usual way.

Older compatible Palms can be bought on Ebay for about £10 - £20. Ideally buy one with about 8K of memory, which can hold about 100+ MIDI files.

The following site has the ITTY MIDI compatibility list -
http://www.ittymidi.com/compatibility.asp
On the left-hand side of the page you will see a link to the ITTY MIDI player download for $29.99. You will need that.

You don't need to buy their MIDI converter. Just go to http://my.execpc.com/~tz/midihw.txt
to see a written description of a simple adapter on the serial cable.

http://www.gweep.net/~shifty/ezkit/noahmidipilot.html shows pictures of the adaptor. Also see http://my.execpc.com/~tz/aut_0011.jpg

The ITTY software is installed on your PC, and the Palm hot-syncs to it via the serial port when it is plugged in. A program called ITTY Loader then sends selected MIDI files to the Palm. The system works wonderfully well.

Other useful sites: http://www.thepalmtree.com/hardware.htm
http://www.cesium.com/pilotdtr/
http://euro.palm.com/uk/

Best wishes to the new Forum and to all its readers.

Bob Essex

Dave Stubbs · Posted: Tue Jun 27, 2006 10:39 pm Post subject: MIDI Players

Hi Bob, thanks for the info.

I think there will be quite a bit of interest in any alternate forms of MIDI players, as the 'traditional' players like the Viscount and Casio are becoming scarce.

The Viscount is still available, but it costs £400~ish. The Casio is still available, but only from anyone who bought up a load of them when Casio discontinued it.

There are some 'Flash' memory MIDI players (eg the 'Genius'), but again relatively expensive and also fairly complex to set up.

You can of course use a PC/Laptop with a MIDI adaptor, but this can be an expensive solution and of course there is the 'Boot-up' time, which can become very tedious!

Best regards,

Dave Stubbs

George Houghton · Posted: Wed Jun 28, 2006 9:42 pm Post subject:

Thanks David & Bob for the posts.Good news for midi users.
I am interested in any info that has to do with midi. having built the Harmonie Orchestrion a few years ago using midi with Dave Stubbs electronics
As Dave says there is a need for an alternative to the Casio & Viscount,
This Palm sounds as if will do the job OK.
Perhaps in the near future Dave will be able to configure the Forum so that we will be able to post pictures.
I would certainly like to see a picture of your project David.

Regards.
George

David Marks · Posted: Wed Jun 28, 2006 11:13 pm Post subject:

That's particularly interesting George since my DIY midi decoder board was built using the excellent web site of Thorsten Klose (www.ucapps.de) It is in effect his midio 128 which was designed for Willy van der Reijden who was midifying a Frati-hymnia orchestrian details of which are at :
http://mmd.foxtail.com/Tech/mvdReijden.html
I would of course be more than happy to provide a photo of my "beast" when we have the technology!
Still., first things first. It's just good to have people who are prepared to run a forum like this so that we can all learn a bit more
Cheers David M