nalpno / keyboardscanner

Turn your broken (or unused) keyboard into a MIDI controller (with pedal and veloticy)

Home Page:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z840N9P-T2k

Geek Repo:Geek Repo

Github PK Tool:Github PK Tool

Moura's Keyboard Scanner

Turn your broken (or unused) keyboard in a MIDI controller (with pedal and veloticy)

This Arduino sketch was the one that I used to make the project demonstrated in this video. It is about a keyboard controller that I've made using an old Alesis QS6 Keyboard directly connected to an Arduino Mega rev3 acting as keyboard scanner with velocity reading and sustain pedal support.

In 2017 I did the same with another keyboard (an old Casio from a friend). The code was refactored and a great library called DIO2 was used to speed up the scanning and clean up the old code.

Warning: this sketch is for keyboard with velocity support only.

keyboardscanner

How to make your own MIDI controller

  1. Disassemble the keyboard to have access to the flat cables (one or two, depending on the number of keys);
  2. Using a multimeter with the diode testing find out and understand the matrix order, starting from the first key;
  3. Connect the cable directly to the Arduino Mega (because it has enough pins to a 61 keys keyboard with velocity);
  4. Change the pins (if necessary) in output_pins and input_pins arrays and have fun :-)

How velocity works

Normally it is a ribbon rubber with two contacts for each key that touch the board in two diffent moments: since the key was pressed until it slopes the board completly. The code measure the difference, varying between 2 and 120 ms, depending on the keyboard. It is transformed in a MIDI value from 0 to 127.

About

Turn your broken (or unused) keyboard into a MIDI controller (with pedal and veloticy)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z840N9P-T2k


Languages

Language:Arduino 100.0%