A quick thanks to Jason for the MIDI-in schematic (and opto-isolators)

If you're having trouble with your MIDI (as we were, trying to get our input working through an opto-isolator) there's only one person with the wealth of experience worth asking and that's Jason. He quickly identified that the random spare-part left-over opto-isolator we were trying to use for our MIDI-In simply wasn't up to the job.

Apparently there isn't a great range of opto-isolators to work from for handling MIDI. Most are simply used as switches. And while its' true that serial data is just flipping a switch really quickly, we need an opto-isolator that can switch on and off quickly enough to keep up with the data rate.

Jason kindly gave us a couple of 6N138 isolators and an updated schematic to work from.

The isolator neatly inverts the MIDI logic (in MIDI a zero is a high signal and a one is low) as well as holding the RX line high when idling - just how all good UART peripherals like it.

With this slight alteration we got our MIDI In working reliably - with the added bonus that we can now hook up and MIDI source, powered from anywhere; the isolator means there's no need for a common ground or similar reference. Which is just as well - to date we've tested our light-up guitar fretboard by loading MIDI files on the laptop and playing them through a usb-to-midi interface conntect to a second usb port. This means the serial port and the MIDI signal have both been generated from the same source.

But the ultimate test of our MIDI capabilities will be when we plug the guitar into a portable keyboard, press a key and see which of our frets lights up!