Midi controller that can also power a daisy?

Hardware Development
1

I power my daisy seed build with the onboard USB, usually to a battery pack, but sometimes the computer hub. I also use this onboard usb to receive midi data (when connected to the computer / DAW).

I’m wondering if I have any options for connecting a midi controller directly to my synth, bypassing the computer USB connection. The issue is, the keyboard would have to supply power to the daisy as well. Unless there’s some clever mechanism for splicing two cables into the single USB input (one from the keyboard and one from the battery)…

If none of that is possible, does anyone have opinions on what is the better solution between:

  1. adding a new power input and using internal USB for midi, vs
  2. adding a new midi input and using internal USB for power?

Any help is appreciated!

Thanks!

2

It’s pretty easy to build a Midi circuit for the Daisy Seed that doesn’t use the USB cable. It basically looks like this where MIDI_IN / MIDI_OUT would connect to any of USART enabled pins on the Seed.

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Then you can connect the other ends of the circuit to standard midi cables and connect it to your keyboard.

As you mentioned, though the seed would not have power then. You can’t do power over the midi cable, so you’d have to either keep the daisy plugged into a USB jack or make a power circuit to connect to the VIN pin on the seed.

Hope that helps!

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