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About

Why this exists​

MIDI is three numbers. Buttons send notes, everything else sends control changes, and nothing in the protocol says the numbers have to be about music. George has been making that point from stages since 2017, first with JavaScript and tiny computers, then as workshops with a Circuit Playground on every desk, then in 2026 as a Processing workshop. Talks and workshops has every one of them.

Each time, the kit was built for one day. Three of the workshop sites are offline now and live on here only as copies. This one is meant to stay up: the Explorer at a stable URL, a page per device, the helpers as installable packages, and the examples grouped by what they teach. If you bought a MIDI thing and want it to do something, this is the page to start from. Start here.

Thanks​

  • Masson at useMidi, for the PipSqueaks on the table at Processing Community Day 2026.
  • Processing Community Day NYC 2026, at NYU ITP, for the room.

Contribute​

The site, helpers, devices, examples and firmware pointers live in one repo.

  • A device: copy devices/_template/, fill the message map from the Explorer, add a photo, open a pull request. devices/CONTRIBUTING.md has the fields.
  • A board: Make your own lists the firmware, one folder each in firmware/, with a README that has the message map and the flash steps.
  • A fix: generated pages say which source file they come from. Edit the source, not the page. The rest are plain Markdown under website/docs/.

Licence​

Code is MIT. Text, photos and the talk material are CC BY 4.0: reuse them with a credit to George Mandis and a link to this site. Both licences are in the repo as LICENSE and LICENSE-CONTENT.txt.

Who​

George Mandis. george.mand.is. New work on this site goes out in /dev/random, the newsletter.