Today, well last night and this morning, I had a plan. As my last post was all ‘OMG, new toys!’ and excitement, I thought I’d continue with my plans. I’d been thinking of more applications for the sequencer software and had been reading up on MIDI NES’s, LSDJ etc and remembered hearing about MGB. MGB is a program for the Game Boy by Trash80 which basically plays back MIDI notes on the Game Boy’s sound chip (and GBA). Which is cool because I have never gotten my head around trackers like LSDJ. Anyway, to use MGB you need to build an Arduino Boy, also designed by Trash80. The Arduino Boy also will sync Nanoloop to MIDI clock. Sooo. I’ve got a Flash Cart on the way, but in the mean time, why not build that Arduino Boy? So I did.
I already had an Arduino lying around in an old synth I’d tried (and failed) to build. I also had a MIDI shield for the Arduino from yet another project I’d failed in completing. The MIDI shield really helped because I’ve never managed to make the opto-isolating circuit for MIDI to be stable correctly… (I just remembered that I did eventually get this right in the little MIDI splitter box I made last year, but alas).
After struggling with the resistors (damn those coloured bands) I got the beast working! Flashing lights ahoy!
I also had an old project box lying around, so I squished the whole lot into the box.
So, that seems to be all well and good. Here are some links:
Finally here is a little video with a horribly obvious spelling mistake. The lights flash, the sync syncs and yeah.. Its working.
Hopefully next time I’ll have the MGB stuff working, time to sit by the letter box…