Modular Guitar Pedal Rack with MIDI Switching

[BaronWilhelm]

After building a few pedals, I grew tired of the growing cable mess and never want to spray paint again.  I decided to build a rack unit to house all my pedals in a tidy configuration.  So, I designed a relay switcher board to handle switching with a face mounted momentary switch.  The units are all daisy-chained together as slaves on an I2C bus and can be switched with a single master Arduino (with a PCB shield I designed) via MIDI or USB from a PC.  I thought you guys might be interested in checking it out   The link is to the imgur album with descriptions of the build process.

Modular Guitar Pedal Rack with MIDI Switching

[Martan]

Wow! Great work, and thanks for the walkthrough.

[Leevibe]

This is fantastic work, man! This is such a cool mix of everything that makes electronics and guitar fun. Bravo.

[Timko]

Awesome design man. 

[Aristatertotle]

Sweet! I need to build something like this.

[BaronWilhelm]

Thanks guys!  I'd probably do a few things different on the switcher board but not much.  I really appreciate you all taking the time to check it out.

[m-Kresol]

that's very impressive.

what is the patchbay on the front for? And I think 400mA won't do it with that number of pcbs effects.

[daleykd]

And I think 400mA won't do it with that number of pcbs effects.

I have to agree.  I wonder if the 400mA also includes the relays?  If so, I definitely would think it may not be enough.

[BaronWilhelm]

what is the patchbay on the front for? And I think 400mA won't do it with that number of pcbs effects.

No it won't   I'd never built a power supply before, so this is really just a stop-gap.  I have some bigger transformers to build another linear supply, but am also investigating building my own "quiet"/low-ripple switching supply as my next project.   The patchbay is so I can run the ins/outs of each pedal to the front panel in a re-configurable way.  Right now most of them are just daisy-chained in the rear, but I have my drive pedals on a different chain than the delays.  I had considered mounting the I/O on the pedal faceplates but decided against it to save space and reduce visible cable clutter.

[wgc]

Dreamy

[Lubdar]

awesome work so far!!!