I have a old organ that i want to convert to midi and have seen different options that could possibly work for it.I gutted the organ and just have the 2 keyboards. I believe each key has 2 wires running from it but still trying to think of a solution. I found this video but they keyboard is 'matrix' and mine is 'bussed'.
There was another video i found where she had used a couple '4051 multiplexers' for the multiple keys.
this one as well:
Basically the bass pedals are gone and only want the keyboard setup. I know i can just go buy a midi keyboard but that ruins the fun of the project.I'm familiar with electronics but have never used an arduino before. So is it possible to line up enough multiplexers in a way to handle multiple key presses on the keyboard?(chords and single note) I just have a feeling that im gonna need a lot of wiring to set this thing up and or expensive.What are your thoughts? thanks
To make it simple, can i trigger one key on the keyboard with those 2 wires coming from it? I found this:
Which i figure if i set it up on a protoboard with the resistor i should be fine for testing. I just have no clue if it will trigger from a keyboard press instead of a piezo. I figure im gonna get the Arduino Mega for the project.
As that article says you can use 16 inputs to scan 64 keys in an 8x8 matrix, which you could choose to wire it into.
Even a Uno has 20 digital pins, leaving two for serial IO (ie. the MIDI interface) you still have 18 over.
If you use diodes you should be able to remove "phantom" presses and thus reliably detect if one or more keys are pressed at once. I'm not sure offhand if you need 8, 16 or 64 diodes, but diodes are cheap.
With your 8x8 matrix you just use standard keypad libraries to scan (you sink a row and source a column, and detect if you get an input, something like that).
However you would only need that if you needed to multiplex analog. I suppose we need to ask, is the output from these keys digital (on/off) or analog (some sort of range)?
You should be able to establish that pretty quickly with a multimeter.
first of all i do realy like Arduino. but if i do midi without anyother fansy stuff. that can be easy be done with arduino.
i use a project called MIDIBOX. i would take a look at it.
this device if you take the _NG version can handle up to 2048 buttons with led or ledrings.
256 Pots/faders, 32 motorfaders, sequencer, soundcard , CV, AOUT, and some other stuff.
its a DIY project so if you order it you need to know how a solderiron works as everything will come as parts.
and bit project makes realy hard thing to do realy easy.
Making a midi keyboard is not easy. It is not just a matter of detecting a key press but you need to detect the velocity of the key as well. This is normally done by timing the interval between the switch being broken and being made again.
Thanks for all the replies. I will check out all of those links as well. What i got from the different midi designs was that analog was the easiest route to go. All i could find was that using the digital pins would allow me to connect a midi interface and bypass the usb. Im just trying to find a basic way to wire it together as a arduino is all new to me.
Will a general midi sketch be good say if i only have a few keys connected until i get the rest of the parts? I dont even know where to start with learning how to program.lol. Im guessing its fairly easy, right?I ordered 100 1m resistors since it seems like thats what most use.
Certainly you could test with just a few keys. I'm not sure where the 1M resistors would go. If you aren't familiar with programming you might want to spend the intervening days with some simple test sketches to get yourself more familiar with the concepts.
Thanks for the help. Yeah, i only got them since most of the midi projects i found use them.Dont know if i will go through all of them or not.haha.I'm gonna download the arduino software and try to learn as much as i can about it.
Another question...Just got my mega (not a clone)Should the blinking light on pin 13 be turned off? I uploaded the basic / bare minimum sketch and it has stopped blinking and now is just on. Not sure if it should be turned off or even how to yet.
