I'm a bit of a noob at this coding situation... do i need to have noobs or raspian running on the pi first? or do i clear the sd card and load the img in the samplerbox download? when i try to load the sd card with the samplerbox img (sudo dd bs=1m if=/Users/davidlujan/Downloads/samplerbox_20161114_2.img
of=/dev/disk1) i get this crazy stream of jargon and my terminal crashes. can it just be placed in the subdirectory while running noobs?
The image file usually has to be unarchived to the sd card from whatever computer you downloaded the image file to. There is a windows utility and a mac utility.
Look on the Raspberry Pi downloads page where jessie and noobs are they will tell you how to install an image file on an sd card.
once the image is installed, you can insert the card into your pi and boot from it.
I got the img file to boot and it says that samplerbox should be running fine. it recognized the usb stick with my sample sets on it as well. i built a midi controller out of a thirteen key bass section on an electric organ using this instructable http://www.instructables.com/id/Build-MIDI-Bass-Pedals-for-About-150/ but i cant seem to get them to talk to each other. the bass pedals check out fine in the arduino interface on my computer but when i hook them up: nothing. i am wondering if the bass pedals could be set to an octave too low and thus not reading any of the keys in the sample set. I also am wondering if the note number assigned to the individual samples has to correspond to the note number that shows up in the arduino program when each button is pressed?
Sheesh i am so much better at fixing cars :(
there are alot (i see at least one a week) of older casio,yamaha etc keyboards at the thrift store starting around 5$. I just picked up a casio with a light up keyboard to show the notes, has a slot for memory card etc for about 10$.
The very bottom level of these has no midi interface, but most others do. I suggest aacquiring one of these bargain keyboards as a test bed - make sure it has midi or midi over usb (the ports will tell the tale) This would be handy for troubleshooting and they have some excellent sounds and most have a drum machine built in.
I think there are some programs to indicate midi input for pc/mac, surely there must be similar for linux - on a hardware level if I remember correctly arduiono wants/needs a 5v signal on its gpio bus, PI wants 3.5v (disregard this if you are using USB and not GPIO to interface the midi bass pedals).
when doing serial comms, both device have to have the same data rate and handshake protocols set to match or they talk past each other. Check your midi settings on the arduino and try to get them to match on the PI. Also can be an intermittent cable...
thanks sparky, i was already thinking about borrowing a keyboard to test the pi and trouble shoot what the problem is since i have two variables in the equation and i need to eliminate one. how would i go about setting the midi output level for the arduino? it has a midi shield and doesnt seem to work without it installed so im assuming i have to interface through the GPIO though id rather use usb.
Another question.. do my midi note numbers produced by my pedal board have to correspond to the midi note names of the samples i.e. /low C = midi note 24/ in my test of the arduino so does low C need to be labeled /24.wav/ etc?
Hi David,
I suggest you read this wikipedia entry on Midi, it explains a lot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIDI
I think if you read some of the early entries on this forum from the spring, when some people were asking how to create samples themselves, the developer of Samplerbox, explained his naming conventions for samples, so people could drop their own samples here to share. YOu can still download them I think, have a look at how they are named it should become apparent how he's keeping things straight.
its really arbitrary, you could have any key play any sample, but it gets confusing that way and if you are playing new stuff or live you don't want to have to do translation in your head to try to figure out what comes out when you play a key.
THere should be a way to feed the samplerbox a midi file and have it play it back without requiring any input (other than a trigger to start it/stop it) - but mines not up and running at the moment so I can't poke around. - but that would be a good way to test your setup without a midi keyboard..
HA!!!! :)) i got my pedal board to play as a midi keyboard by plugging it into garageband (which recognized it as a midi controller). So i know it functions as such. I read a thread here where someone was having trouble getting sound out of any of the later versions of samplerbox beyond samplerbox_20150618.img but i cant find a link to this version anywhere. I am going to test with the samplerbox_20160831.img version and see if that works. Do you know if there are links to older versions floating around somewhere?
thanks again for your responses they have all been very helpful! I have been learning a lot about midi for sure