So, where does it get power?
Shut up and take my money
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Thanks to all who commented. I really appreciate the feedback.
Hereās V8 (the first one you guys saw was V7).
It is now 42mm long/deep (down from 52) which is both the answer to greatest question and somehow the same width as a ROKU remote 
Also after reading through the newly posted full manual it seems to me that the 2 levers could be assigned to any FX if there was a way to designate midi cc input to the FX steps in real time ( they can SEND midi cc, why not receive?).
The octave buttons are LED buttons that will light up and pulse/blink with higher levels.
The sustain just lights up.
It is powered by a small LiPo battery and will run midi through Arduino on a Seeed Xiao ESP32C3.
Itās a work in progress, so any comments are still welcome.
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Great idea and even better in the 42mm design. Just what Iām looking for as an Tracker Mini midi tool!
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Slightly off-topic but I had to ask: have you considered a Bluetooth MIDI & audio extension? BT speakers can be found everywhere, and with MIDI you could arrive to a friendās house and connect with their synth instantly. No cables.
I was hoping to be able to use the little Xiao MCUās bluetooth to transmit to BT speakers, but I believe Iād need to add a better ADC chip, which would need more physical space, plus the single core just canāt handle the data ( I may still try a different MCU).
I hadnāt thought about BT MIDI though - I wonder how that would workā¦
I wasnāt planning on doing anything to the MIDI signal coming from the Tracker. It simply passes straight out the side just like the Line signals. If we hijacked it and sent back out through BT it would just need to communicate with one of those BT MIDI dongles. I donāt suppose there are any software engineers reading this that would want to chime in?
Also, hereās the latest V8.1 losing the round buttons feels much more in line with the Tracker.
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This is incredible. I left lurker status and joined to give support. Sign me up!
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Well, i think all major OSās support MIDI BLE at this point. So as long as you have bluetooth (via a dongle or directly on board for a laptop) it should be able to work. And iām sure there are already libraries available to simplify the implementation of MIDI (depending on the MCU you eventually choose).
I think the fun or tricky part would probably be making it passthrough. Ideally it will send/received Bluetooth MIDI but also still work via the TRS Jack.
Youār right. There wouldnāt be any problem talking to a PC.
The dongle I mentioned is for communicating with other midi hardware.
These little guysā¦
Hmā¦ i personally have not used one of those. But i would hope they adhere to the standard and do not use anything proprietary.
Joined the forum here to say how nuts this is a share a big BRAVO!
I donāt have any tracker and honestly donāt plan on getting one, but what a cool DIY project and I hope it sees the light of day.
I would say that Bluetooth audio out would be amazing since Iām assuming most of us have a Bluetooth speaker these days and they sound pretty good, ā¦ It really fits well with the portable vibe and is way better than a little crummy internal speaker.
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Thanks pzs and srmaietta for the words of encouragement!
V2 could see bluetooth added, but Iām going to focus on the core functionality for this first version.
Itāll take a bit of experimentation to see if latency would be too much of an issue for sound.
This is very cool!
I would be extremely interested in a bank of 8 arcade buttons for uhhā¦ thumb-drumming? (canāt really say finger drumming in this case lol)
This is such a cool project!
I have the exact bluetooth midi dongle depicted earlier and - while it is cool - Bluetooth latency is pretty bad tbh.
I still havenāt found a Bluetooth controller with an acceptable amount of latency for entering percussion MIDI, sadly.
Feeding chords to an arp: sure.
Entering notes to the sequencer: absolutely.
But actually playing in the notes with real time record? Probably wonāt work with bluetooth unless thereās been some mega breakthrough since I went down that rabbit hole two years ago.
Like many of you here, I just got my hands on the Mini for the first time recently and was able to spend some time going through all the midi functionality.
I have reworked the design of the mini keyboard.
The 2 dedicated octave buttons have remained and will work like most keyboards. Whichever one is pushed will blink faster with each additional click. Click both to reset.
The 2 levers on the upper left can be user programmable as midi cc controls and the 2 RGB LEDs in the center will be indicators for the those settings. So if a lever is set for Finetune(cc3) then itās indicator may not be needed since itāll work as a simple lever. If a lever is set to Overdrive(cc12) then the itās indicator could change color as the value rises or falls - maybe blue to yellow to red.
If anyone has any other suggestions, please let me know.
This is an OpenSource project design.
In fact if there are any software developers that would like to contribute, your help would be greatly appreciated.
5 Likes
Such a great idea!
Maybe a later variation with the touch grid and a knob like the original!
Congratulations ! Itās a so great idea !
I thought about the same thing, but only a shift of the 4 jack bottom holes to the side of the TM. With the 4 jack holes at the bottom, itās really unstable when connecting to other gears (line in, line out, midi in, midi out). I thing that those hole arenāt at the top of the TM because of the screen. So, I bought those things. itās better than mothing but not as good as your idea. Sure : if Polyend build a such think, Iāll buy it !
Yep, I would buy the shit out of this. Busy trying to find a MIDI controller that I donāt have to power separatelyā¦
That would be cool, but I think the closest we could get to that would be some backlit buttons that would basically do the same as the keyboard. Weāre limited to only MIDI note commands and a few specific MIDI ccās for now. Maybe theyāll expand the communication in future builds.