I don't know of anyone who's tried MIDI

[raw girder]

I want something with Stemma QT to keep this project solderless. I normally wouldn't care, but there's a pretty good chance I'll be ripping it all up and rebuilding it more than once and it might be in spaces where soldering is uncomfortable at least.

I don't need much horsepower, just enough to handle the MIDI stuff with reasonable latency (For which I'm sure the BT MIDI will be the biggest contributor)

I could also just solder a stemma QT pin-to-female connector to any devboard - or even do a female pin header to QT connector to avoid soldering outright - but at some point I'm worried about the I2C signal integrity down the quite long line I'm going to need. Of course, these are getting to concerns that don't belong in this channel, just trying to explain my board choice.

Though, agreed, it would be nice to have a board that has native USB stuff, doubly so if it can do USB midi should I feel like hardwiring in instead of using ble.

The board I was thinking about was https://www.adafruit.com/product/5395, but it looks like you're suggesting something like https://www.adafruit.com/product/5323 ? (I'd say one of the non feathers as an option too, but it appears they're all out of stock)

[safe heron]

I am thinking of https://www.adafruit.com/product/5426 or https://www.adafruit.com/product/5700

8MB flash no PSRAM or 4MB flash/2MB PSRAM

[raw girder]

Oh! Didn't even see those were a thing

[safe heron]

latter is probably a better choice due to the PSRAM

[raw girder]

Agreed.

[safe heron]

and it's cheaper!

[raw girder]

Rad, I'll go with that then. Much appreciated.

[safe heron]

also if things are out of stock check Digi-Key or Mouser

the number of USB devices on Espressif is limited. If you do want to do USB MIDI and other USB stuff see https://learn.adafruit.com/customizing-usb-devices-in-circuitpython/how-many-usb-devices-can-i-have#hardware-limitations-3096627 . Should be OK for just MIDI

[raw girder]

Will do. I've gotten good at sourcing parts lately with needing to avoid Tarrifs - though fortunately I can always poke my employer to get parts if they become un-obtanium for most people. (Not that Tarrifs haven't also hit them)

[raw girder]

Noted. If I do need to actually do hard-wired MIDI I might actually add a 5-pin din or TRS MIDI connector too, just to keep it isolated should I want to jam with the system on hardware gear.