arduino_midi_library VS FastLED

take a look here

The Arduino MIDI Library [1]. Back in 2009, I learned C++ to build it and control my guitar effects pedals with custom electronics as part of my engineering degree.

[1] https://github.com/FortySevenEffects/arduino_midi_library

Your project can be broken up into a number of subprojects. For keyscanning you don't need additional hardware, just the pins from the ribbon cables going to the arduino's digital pins and ground. Since the keys are just switches (two per key, the time difference between the two switches closing giving the source of velocity), you could start with some examples from the Arduino MIDI library (https://github.com/FortySevenEffects/arduino_midi_library). To test MIDI sending you don't even need to start from the keybed just yet, and if you do, you can start with a single key. Once you've got that part figured out end to end (key press/release generates note on/off events) you can work on iterating through the matrix, CC controls etc. MIDI out can be done in different ways. With a 5 pin DIN plug you'd just need two 220 ohm resistors.

On an Arduino compatible platform the configuration of the baud rate at the bare metal layer is taken care of by the library when you call its begin() method. Looking at the example code included with the library it appears that there are no timer interrupts or anything like that required of you in order to use it. Another thing that jumps out is that the call to read() returns a non-zero value if anything has been received that you should use to predicate whether any further attention needs to be spent on it by your code. You may know this but it wasn't apparent from the loop() { MIDI.read\`() }` example that you gave above.

As i have started to combine this with Midi Implementation from FourtySevenEffects lib, i only have done a quick test with two/three strips and did discover follwing issue(s):

Using a library for the midi shield you can register two functions as callbacks. One callback for NoteOn(...) messages and one for NoteOff(...) messages. But thre is much more. In the end the source of truth should always be the docs for the library itself.

Click the link to github (second link in the article) and there's all the source code: https://github.com/FortySevenEffects/arduino_midi_library

Here’s a library that might work.

Solution from GitHub here:

I used the examples from here https://github.com/FastLED/FastLED/wiki/Multiple-Controller-Examples

Sweet. Then pretty much any arduino or other microcontroller would take care of what you need. The strips only take one output pin plus power and ground so just about everything will work for driving them. They act like a long shift register so the single pin is all that's needed to load the full strip with whatever patterns you want regardless of the length. You just have to tell it how many LEDs there are in total is all. Check out the FastLED library. You can learn more about it there and/or install the library in the IDE by pressing "ctrl shift I" for windows or "command shift I" for mac and search for it in the upper search area and install it right there. It comes with working examples too so all you would have to do is install the library, load one of the new example sketches that came with it, and probably edit the example to change the NUM_LEDS count to match what you're working with.