Motor Fader MIDI controller with Arduino
This project is for a simple MIDI controller based on a single motorized fader in a small box, using USB for both MIDI communication and power.
The motorfader is an ALPS RS60N12M9000A, I bought a few of these spare motorfaders for my studio mixer many years ago, and I decided to use one for this project. The problem is that it needs at least 8 Volts and at least 300 mA to move. It doesn't move with just 5 Volts.
The solution is to use two components between the Arduino Pro Micro board (Leonardo clone) and the motorfader:
- the first is a power driver ST L293B, it is a 4-channel driver, but we need just 2 channels for the two motor poles;
- to bring the USB 5V power to 8,5V I found a cheap step-up DC-DC converter based on an MT3608 chip.
The compoents used for this project are:
- Arduino Pro Micro (Leonardo clone, ATmega 32u4)
- L293B
- Step-Up DC-DC converter MT3608
- ALPS RS60N12M9000A
- Hammond mfg. 1591 plastic container
See the images in the pic/ folder.
Watch the project in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2A8huV0Kvhg