Hello Composers,
i just stumbled over the following videos, which i personally found reeeeeaaaalllyyy intresting. Building MIDI Controllors for a Fistful of Dollars? (Sorry about the pun, I’m in Morricone fever…)
Seems like a very nice upcoming winter-project…
Have Fun,
Michael
Hmm… Well, I’ve dealt a bit with MIDI, but mostly input. Built a synth with three SID chips way back, and before then, I was playing around with my own trackers and other audio code on the Amiga. Oh, and a small game I did as a university project could actually send MIDI to a hardware synth for sound effects, so I guess you could think of that as a MIDI controller of sorts… 
Last controller project would be my desk with integrated Fatar keybed, but that’s basically just a straight transplant from my old SL880 master keyboard.
Currently, I’m trying to get around to finish my analog triple piano pedal setup, where I’m using a Roland RPU-3 hooked up to a box with a Doepfer “Wheel Electronic” module in it.
Apart from modular synth stuff, Dopefer offers a bunch of handy modules if you want to deal with MIDI and various sorts of hardware without building custom electronics.
I Just found this really intresting, enables me so much things to do in the future. I have already built a lot with ESP Controllers and Arduino, but never thought to do stuff with midi. Im thinking of individual faders for CC1 and 11, Record and Pause buttons, etc…Fully customizable with software… Will see what i can do here…
On that note, I have a Bela devkit lying around, but haven’t gotten around to do anything with it yet. :-/ It has a bunch of analog I/O, but had not MIDI support when I got it - but that seems to be covered now.
Anyway, I’ve been thinking about using ribbon controllers to build some sort of violin or cello style controller, covering the fretless fingerboard as well as the bow aspects. Not sure how that would work out, but given that violinists and cellists tend to do pretty well with Otamatone, I think there’s potential.