See the full article on Soldered.com.
Project where an ESP32-S3 board with USB-OTG acts as a MIDI device for Surge XT. A continuous note is played (can be paused with a button) while the HX711 load cell sets the cutoff filter value based on applied pressure.
Note: If you are using an ESP32-S3 with USB-OTG the board presents itself as a USB MIDI device directly. If your board does not support USB-OTG native MIDI, you will need additional tools to bridge USB serial to MIDI:
- Hairless MIDI — converts serial output to MIDI
- loopMIDI (Windows) or a similar virtual MIDI port driver
- An ESP32-S3 board
- Load-cell amplifier HX711
- Simple Pushbutton
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If you haven't already, install Arduino IDE
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Download this repository and extract it
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Start the arduino sketch located in HX711_MIDI_Controller/HX711_MIDI_Controller.ino
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Click on the Boards Manager icon on the left and search for esp32 by Espressif Systems and install it
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In the Select other board or menu... dropdown menu pick the ESP32S3 Dev Module and the serial port it is connected to
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Install all of the libraries mentioned under Software requirements
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Connect ESP32-S3 board to your PC via UART USB port when uploading code.
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In Arduino IDE under Tools set USB Mode to USB-OTG (TinyUSB).
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Upload the sketch.
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Now switch the USB port connection on your S3 board from UART to USB.
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Open Surge XT program, under Options select Audio/MIDI Settings and pick TinyUSB MIDI as Active MIDI input.
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On main screen, right click on Cutoff filter slider and select MIDI Learn to make it respond to load cell input.
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Now pick a filter type and apply pressure on the load cell to play the tunes!
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