Scrap Wood MIDI Fader Is Easy to Build, Looks Beautiful

It would seem that from the beginning of the art form that electronic music and hacking have gone together. Now, with amazing tools…

Jeremy Cook
5 years ago

It would seem that from the beginning of the art form, electronic music and hacking have gone together. Now, with amazing tools available such as the Arduino Pro Micro, it’s possible to create your own control surface with just some faders and scrap wood!

As seen in the video and detail shots of the project, the device does a great job of incrementally increasing and decreasing four signals, and uses the USBMIDI library running on the Arduino board for interface. Given the Pro Micro’s HID capabilities via its ATmega32U4 chip, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to use it as a gaming or robot controller, or anything where traditional interfaces just don’t quite do the trick.

Build-wise, the four faders are affixed to the underside of a piece of scrap wood. While woodworking details are fairly slim, it appears that a square to hold the electronics was cut out of one piece of wood, which was then glued onto a top piece of plywood with slits cut in it for the faders to poke through. It’s a simple, but effective way to craft a functional electronics enclosure, and after applying semi-gloss finish meant for hardwood flooring, it looks very much at home among a keyboard and other purchased equipment!

[h/t: Reddit]

Jeremy Cook
Engineer, maker of random contraptions, love learning about tech. Write for various publications, including Hackster!
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