Cheap Expandable Floor Piano
I created design to build a big and expandable floor piano (1 to 8 or more octaves) with learning mode (led will light the keys), driven by phone (first with midi file and great sound banks only). The project must be cheap (I'm doing it for free, but it will be used in a music school and I'd like to have it used in more than one), strong (we will have hundreds of kids that will play on it, it can't be made of materials that will not last in time), and expandable (size and price matter, 3 octave makes it more than 3 meters long and around 1000$). I'd like to be able to keep price under 250$ each octaves using open source and as cheap as possible hardware.I already have 2 different release, and am working on the third one, with fully redesigned board.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/zgVPkDczEqyu9RbT6
https://hackaday.io/project/2295-cheap-expandable-floor-piano
They were plenty of challenges with this piano.
I had a lot of trouble but got all bullet ticked:
- Cheap (using micro-controllers for the piano)
- Big but could fit in a car (from 1 to 8 meters long)
- Expandable (from 1 to 8 octaves now)
- Strong (it's for kids, even if adults love to play too)
- No moving parts (same reason as above)
- Easy to use alone
- Added a Raspi to use the piano as a Midi controller, and added a accompaniment mode and a learning mode.
I started to think about this project after having seen the movie Big (with Tom Hanks). I started small building one onote and trying a zillion things to detect contact between a translucent sheet of plastic (contactor, spring, sheet of reactive to pressure plastic, ..), I finally found the solution using capacitive detection will be the best for the constraints I have to take into account. Finding the Silver Fabric trick took quite long, there are plenty of other solutions there, spray, electrolysis,... but Fabric is cheaper while being the simplest to implement.
The Piano is used now in the music school especially to work on rhythm, Biggest play has been on 7 octaves, with 4 kids playing, but it has not been recorded...
At this day, I built 8 octaves, 4 are mine and are in my music room, and 4 are used in the music school.
I had a lot of trouble but got all bullet ticked:
- Cheap (using micro-controllers for the piano)
- Big but could fit in a car (from 1 to 8 meters long)
- Expandable (from 1 to 8 octaves now)
- Strong (it's for kids, even if adults love to play too)
- No moving parts (same reason as above)
- Easy to use alone
- Added a Raspi to use the piano as a Midi controller, and added a accompaniment mode and a learning mode.
I started to think about this project after having seen the movie Big (with Tom Hanks). I started small building one onote and trying a zillion things to detect contact between a translucent sheet of plastic (contactor, spring, sheet of reactive to pressure plastic, ..), I finally found the solution using capacitive detection will be the best for the constraints I have to take into account. Finding the Silver Fabric trick took quite long, there are plenty of other solutions there, spray, electrolysis,... but Fabric is cheaper while being the simplest to implement.
The Piano is used now in the music school especially to work on rhythm, Biggest play has been on 7 octaves, with 4 kids playing, but it has not been recorded...
At this day, I built 8 octaves, 4 are mine and are in my music room, and 4 are used in the music school.
