Has anyone messed around building a somewhat higher resolution (than MIDI 1.0) knob box using Arduinos or clones? Does anyone have an idea if synth joysticks turn their pots the full length? One of the greater annoyances with my controllers (both Korg and Roland) is that the mod and bend have fairly low resolution, and MIDI 1.0’s 128 value pots make certain parameters sound very chunky during changes. I’d like something smoother without slewing. I’ve had the idea of hooking a replacement joystick up an arduino along with some pots and knobs and feeding this into my Linux box via serial, and I wonder if someone else here has traveled this path.
My last experiments with an Arduino were pre VCV, but this sounds like a nice project. IIRC the ADC converters have a 10-bit resolution, so 1024 steps. Communication via USB was simple but I cant remember how stable or the speed. I would hope to develop a module to convert the incoming data to CV to be straight forward.
If I can find the time, and my Arduino I may well attempt this. I shall keep you informed if I make any progress.
I did a quick experiment with a junk pot I had lying around hooked to A0, +5V, and Gnd with no filter cap, and I used this code: https://gist.github.com/caoliver/7040a91db5260e0dbe260a242b4d7520
The value was fairly stable, and I’m not sure an exterior capacitor really would buy that much. I sent the result into a number of synths hooking it to oscillators and resonant filters, and I didn’t hear any zippering. The logic would be only slightly more complicated for several pots.