DIY Midi Foot Pedal Controller

Guitar is a great hobby, but great tones come from expensive amplifiers and pedals. When I started looking for new sounds, I used VSTs (Virtual Studio Plugins) and a DAW (Digital Audio Workstion). The only thing I was missing was a way to control the plugins through a foot pedal.

Typically, VSTs are controlled by MIDI foot controllers, which can be purchased for around $170 on Amazon. After some research, I found out Arduinos can send MIDI signal over USB, which was exactly what I needed. I purchased the materials below to build this pedal

6"x11" Cast Steel Electrical box: $20 from my local ECE supply shop

USB Type B PCB port: $2 from my local ECE supply shop

Teensy 4.0 Development Board: $24 from Amazon

Pack of 10 Foot Switches: $15 on Amazon

I already had the 2 X 20 LCD display, jumper wires, and the 1/4" audio jack

Metalworking!

I had to shape the box with hand tools, which took alot of sweat but I'm happy with the results.

Wiring

Wiring was much more pleasant than the filework, and I'm alot happier with how the inside turned out vs the outside. I mounted the Teensy to a blank PCB with some headers, and then designed the switch and LCD circuits on the PCB. Having everything on one board made it easy to mount with M3 standoffs.

The diagram below shows how I wired the pedal.

Check out the Git!

Midi_Controller