Midi control of small pedalboard - how difficult to learn?

[Tricky Fish]

I have a small pedalboard with the following:

Preamp
Compressor
CBA Mood
Keeley Eccos
Meris Mercury 7

I like the idea of using a compact midi controller (such as the Morningstar MC3 or Disaster Area DMC Micro Pro) to change presets simultaneously on the Mood, Eccos and Merc7 (preamp and compressor would stay as is - set and forget for my core tone). I could use the presets to store tones for different songs, particularly for some of the ambient / experimental music I am currently engaged in.

However, I’ve never used Midi and don’t have a sense of how difficult it would be to learn. Some questions for the forum experts:

1. How hard is it to learn to program midi?

2. The 3 pedals that I’d like to control are from different manufacturers - will this make the midi control much more complex?

3. Do I need to connect to a computer? Or can the programming be done entirely on the pedals?

4. Is midi control of presets across multiple pedals worth it?

[Chipotle]

Way back in the day, I played in high tech synth-based band. We had this cool device called an Axxess Midi Mapper, which could take any incoming MIDI signals and map it to any other outgoing MIDI signals--a game changer at the time. The drummer had electronic pads, and I had a Roland GP-8 guitar effects unit which could switch patches based on MIDI. The keyboardist would hit one pedal, and all the sounds--synths, guitar, drums--would change for the next song. I also had a MIDI pedal at my feet for mid-song effects changes.

We were a cover band, so I was mimicking a different song and guitar effects each piece. In that situation, where you are changing patches often, yes, it was totally worth it to have MIDI control of all the patches on the fly.

To answer your other questions in reverse order:

3. Programming will depend on the pedal. Some may need to connect to a computer, or at least connecting will make the programming easier.

2. Manufacturer won't make a difference except for how you program the pedal; MIDI is MIDI. You'll just need to figure out which command to send to which pedal.

1. I don't think MIDI would be too hard to figure out, but then I'm pretty familiar with it. You'll have to trawl through the pedal and controller manuals to figure out a) which commands you need to send to each pedal, and b) set up a patch on the controller to send the right set of commands at once.