I've recently bought and reworked a 1919 Tangley circus calliope. It runs off of compressed air (1psi) and has no technology other than pneumatic. I'm trying to automate it by running a laptop full of midi music files through a midi cord or usb cord to some kind of controller or interface that will send the data out on 43 wires to fire 43 12 volt solenoids that will pull down the 43 piano keys to play music. I need to find a board that accomplish this task without breaking the bank. There is a Midwestern company that sells a controller that reads from an sd card without any outside control or selection. It is also quite expensive. If it comes to it I'll have to buy it, but am looking for an alternative, say with a usb connection that will power the board as well. Any thoughts??
This project MIDI Glockenspiel uses 8 solenoids to hit the notes. It takes in a MIDI stream and plays the notes. You can expand this to include all your notes.
The MIDI can come from a computer but if you want it to come from an SD card then look into marco_c's MIDI file playing software at MajicDesigns (Marco Colli) ยท GitHub
Driving 8 solenoids should be easy with almost any Arduino. Driving 43 solenoids shouldn't be much harder. It just needs an extra layer. Look into multiplexing. Shouldn't be expensive.