Bind MIDI inputs to LED lights using a Raspberry Pi

By Boris Landoni on April 10, 2019

Blinky lights and music created using a Raspberry Pi? Count us in! When Aaron Chambers shared his latest project, Py-Lights, on Reddit, we were quick to ask for more information. And here it is:

Controlling lights with MIDI commands

Tentatively titled Py-Lights, Aaron’s project allows users to assign light patterns to MIDI actions, creating a rather lovely blinky light display.

For his example, Aaron connected a MIDI keyboard to a strip of RGB LEDs via a Raspberry Pi that ran his custom Python code.

Aaron explains on Reddit:

The program I made lets me bind “actions” (strobe white, flash blue, disable all colors, etc.) to any input and any input type (hold, knob, trigger, etc.). And each action type has a set of parameters that I bind to the input. For example, I have a knob that changes a strobe’s intensity, and another knob that changes its speed.

The program updates each action, pulls its resulting color, and adds them together, then sends that to the LEDs. I’m using rtmidi for reading the midi device and pigpio for handling the LED output.

Aaron has updated the Py-Lights GitHub repo for the project to include a handy readme file and a more stable build.

The post Bind MIDI inputs to LED lights using a Raspberry Pi appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

About Boris Landoni

Boris Landoni is the technical manager of Open-Electronics.org. Skilled in the GSM field, embraces the Open Source philosophy and its projects are available to the community.