Brett Park of Shiverware wrote to share news about Rainboard, a DIY dynamic isomorphic keyboard.
The Rainboard is a 61 button isomorphic keyboard. Each button contains a RGB led in order to light up the button. A midi value is also mapped to each button. The colours and midi values of the buttons are set from an external source (currently the Musix iOS application, but could easily be set by any serial midi device) using sysex messages. This allows the layout to be change very rapidly. All that needs to be done is to use Musix to select the desired layout on screen and push a button to send the data to the Rainboard. The Rainboard then sets all the LEDs and midi values then stores these values in EEPROM to save settings across resets so the external device is not needed after the desired layout is set.
When buttons are pressed the note values are sent to an onboard midi instrument shield in order to produce sound via a 1/8 inch audio jack. As well, the midi values are sent to Musix (with note identifier values rather than midi values). This allows Musix to know exactly which button was pressed if multiple notes of the same midi value are present on the board. Musix can then use it’s built in synthesizer to play the music or it can send the data on to other iOS apps to synthesize the audio (such as NLogSynth, Arctic Keys, or SampleWiz).
More information: Rainboard
