Raspberry Pi MIDI Footswitch Controller

I wanted to add an extra four footswitches (for cheap!) to my Atomic Amplifire 6 and discovered that a Raspberry Pi can be used as a MIDI controller.

Parts:

• Raspberry Pi Zero
• 4 × Footswitches + wires + resistors
• 4 × LEDs
• USB to MIDI cable
• OTG cable for Pi Zero to accept USB A
• Casing

How it works:

• 4 footswitches wired to the Pi’s GPIO, each with its own LED indicator.
• Pressing a switch sends a predefined MIDI Control Change (CC) message (which can be set in the code) to the connected device.
• The controller can distinguish between short and long presses, so each switch can trigger 2 actions.
• LEDs provide visual feedback whenever a press is registered.
• On startup, all LEDs flash in sequence to show the controller is ready.
• The Pi automatically searches for and connects to available MIDI devices.
• Once running, it continuously listens for footswitch presses and sends out the matching MIDI messages.

Code and details:
Full source code and setup notes here