Week 1 Blog: Progress

The first step of making an electric player piano work is getting the first key to play. This is easier said than done however, since a solenoid needs to have enough power to fully push the key down while being small enough to fit inside the piano. Last week I ordered 3 different solenoids so I could test each of them and see if any of them would work for this project. From my testing, I was able to get one of the solenoids to play a note reliably. However, I had to overvolt the solenoid in order to get enough power, which caused the solenoid to heat up significantly more than I would like. To alleviate these issues, I have ordered some more powerful solenoids which I will be testing next week and should hopefully work.

Another challenge which I have been working on this week is getting the logic circuit for decoding MIDI signals to work. This is essential for the piano to work since it will allow for a computer to communicate with the piano and tell it when to turn notes on or off. For the most part I have finished building a prototype version of the decoder, and I will be ready to test it next week.

The last part that needs to come together for this project to work is a circuit which takes the output of the decoder and turns the solenoids on or off. I finished one design of this circuit and I am currently ordering parts for it.

Overall, It has been very motivating thus far since I have made a lot more progress than expected this week and since I am well ahead of schedule.