MIDI Relay - sends serial port data straight to the default MIDI port

When it comes to creating MIDI controllers the Arduino is tough to beat. There’s a great development community out there and creating MIDI data is a breeze.

What’s not so cool is that it’s very very difficult to send MIDI data over the standard USB serial port that is used to communicate with the Arduino.

Wouldn’t it be nice if there was something you could do to test your creations, without:

(a) having to solder a 5 pin DIN connector onto the serial port TX pin
(b) hunting around the house for that old USB/MIDI interface that you *know* is in one-of-those-boxes-over-there(tm).

?????

Well now you can – I put together this really simple application that lets you choose a serial port, click start and then it retransmits all the incoming data over to the default MIDI port you configured in Windows control panel.

Click here to download – it was built using Visual Studio 2008 – so will need the .Net framework 3.5 installed to run.

If you use MidiYoke you can route the data straight back into a VST softsynth.

You will need to transmit from the Arduino at 38400 speed.

Job done!
…and not a 220 Ohm resistor in sight.

P.S. – At the moment it only supports note on / note off and controller data.