This website is maintained by Roman Sowa, an independednt designer of electronic circuits for music.
All MIDI controllers presented in this website are available for sale. Please visit also non-commercial site
with more analog synth circuits, mostly modular: www.sowa.synth.net
Sales is based only on the web, without distributor chain, so every customer gets the boards directly
from the factory in Poland, EU. This is the only way to get them so far.
If you live in Canada you can contact www.midichurchandhomeorgans.com
for local support, installation, or parts source.
Products described here are electronic submodules, and using them requires at least basic soldering skills
needed to connect wires to your contacts, or potentiometers.
You can find here several types of MIDI controllers, for small, big and large instuments, for keyboards and knobs.
"Quality first" - that's highlited in every production stage to provide the highest quality boards, while keeping
the price at competitive level.
All MIDI boards sold here (with small exceptions) have a few outstanding features that are obvious and absolute
minimum requirements for any decent electronic equippment, but you can find them highlighted in some companies'
products descriptions, usually on top of the first page, so I thought I could point them here too
Those are in particular:
all designs presented here are original, not published anywhere else and all firmware is originally written by midi-hardware.com
all boards are proudly manufactured in Poland, EU, using circuit boards produced locally, and components from trusted distributors, while most important components directly from IC manufacturers' warehouses.
extremely small size that gives you freedom of putting them anywhere. If you find smaller board
with same functionality, I might consider designing even smaller one just for you, for free.
unbelievable small power consumption making possible to power all of them with small batteries
some models have auto-power off feature, so you can use them with 1 set of batteries even for couple
of years, without worrying about switching power off
all settings are available onboard, no need to setup anything with computer
all settings are stored in non volatile memory, meaning they remain unchanged after removing power
in most cases the same pinout is used for keys, making it very easy to connect, as 1 wire per
key is used.
they are all made in most advanced SMT (Surface Mount) technology, and take advantage of
recent developments in microcontrollers
printed circuit boards are high quality glass epoxy FR4 type, double sided with platted thru holes
and nice green soldermask, and most of newly manufactured boards are gold plated for better performance, if not
for the glamorous look
MIDI cable to board is removable using very high quality, small connector, the same type in all boards
free MIDI DIN5 metal socket with 0.6m (2 ft.) cable, terminated with high quality connector mating the boards.
This way you can easily mount the DIN5 socket on the panel without need to solder any wires.
most of the boards are capable of generating any kind of MIDI data possible, although there are few exceptions
(RPN, NRPN), but if required, this can be implemented in custom build
easy reconfiguration/growth by plugging scanner modules for more switch inputs, or analog inputs for potentiometers.
LED drivers and LCD displays also available (did you know that "D" in "LCD" stands for "display"? this means the therm "LCD display"
is a bit redundant).
every scanner board comes with proper interconnect cables (expander board to main board). You provide only the ribbon
cables that are soldered to your instrument contacts. Ribbon cable can be added to your order at cost of 5EUR per keyboard.
transmission between the boards uses proprietary protocol, which is faster and more secure than MIDI, and it creates
less interference due to controlled spectrum. There is no typical MIDI merging in between modules, no worries about staging latency.
all boards are assembled using world class PACE soldering equipment, by skilled operator with 20+ years soldering experience,
in ESD safe environment, and complying with RoHS EU directive (eco friendly lead-free process).
boards are shipped in ESD protection bags, with cables and printed manual, all in a nice cardboard box.
apart from quality check during every production stage, every component of your order is carefully checked again, just before shipment
free shipping to anywhere in the world with optional Express Mail (EMS) for additional charge depending on order size.