Midi piano with a bunch of grapes

chlorisdroid · Post by **chlorisdroid** » Fri Jul 03, 2015 2:02 am

Hi,
today I build an really natural and ecological Wifi Midi Piano with a bunch of grapes, an Odroid-C1 and Adafruit MPR121 breakout boards. More info here ->
https://blog.georgmill.de/2015/07/02/mo ... odroid-c1/
Please have a look at the video and turn on your sound.

Update: The hardware support for the graped piano is in danger. NXP swallowed my beloved MPR121 chips and simply put it in their archives. More Info here (https://blog.georgmill.de/2016/02/21/nx ... ubenpiano/).
Is this the end of the story? No, sureley it isn't. You can visit my solution for this little problem here ->

The third exposition will be seen on the MakerFaire Ruhr from 12.-13. March 2016.
http://www.makerfaire-ruhr.com/meet-the ... ubenpiano/

The second exposition could be seen on the codemotionworld in Berlin from 2.-3. November 2015 (MakerSpace).
http://berlin2015.codemotionworld.com/p ... akerspace/

The first exposition of the piano on the Maker Faire Berlin 2015 https://blog.georgmill.de/2015/10/06/ma ... ays-after/ was succesful. It made a lot of fun to see little children and their parents experimenting with grapes and sound.

Here a small resumee with video showing the lasers in action
https://blog.georgmill.de/2015/11/07/ad ... rlin-2015/

Post by **odroid** » Fri Jul 03, 2015 10:17 am

Very interesting project of organic grapes piano!

I've enjoyed your great play only about 40 seconds near end of the video.

chlorisdroid · Post by **chlorisdroid** » Fri Jul 03, 2015 5:57 pm

yes, it is a lot of fun playing this grape-midi-keyboard-thing. You could even take gherkins or pumpkins, but the wires are too short and the table too small for that. 48 pumkins --what A PARTY

Jojo · Post by **Jojo** » Fri Jul 03, 2015 6:23 pm

Awesome!

Completely useless, but... AWESOME

!!

Edit: please please please upgrade to pumpkins! Or at least melones

chlorisdroid · Post by **chlorisdroid** » Fri Jul 03, 2015 9:48 pm

It "seems" to be useless for you, cause you don't see the potential in this thing. You can use the midi signals not only for music production. It is possible to execute whatever command you want, turn on your lights, your garage door, your lift, your lawn sprinkler, your...
You can put the triggers behind a mirror or glas, you can use it for surveilance purposes: put a big metal foil under your door mat and trigger if someone passes over it, count the number of people entering a shop... and so on.
I think it makes a lot of sense when connecting it to the internet (IOT). Thousands of possibilities, as I believe.

robroy · Post by **robroy** » Sat Jul 04, 2015 6:05 am

chlorisdroid wrote:It "seems" to be useless for you, cause you don't see the potential in this thing.

I see the potential!

You can use the midi signals not only for music production. It is possible to execute whatever command you want, turn on your lights, your garage door, your lift, your lawn sprinkler

I would love to be able to bite into a banana and see a disco light show playing in my living room.

Jojo · Post by **Jojo** » Sat Jul 04, 2015 7:47 am

chlorisdroid wrote: Thousands of possibilities, as I believe.

I don't think so. I only see one thing: just me behind a wall of melones completely losing my mind while playing "Smoke em if you got em" by "Parkway Drive" or something else with at least 180BPM

!

Don't get me wrong: I totally like you project

! Never seen something like that before and I'd like to see more!

Greetings

chlorisdroid · Post by **chlorisdroid** » Mon Jul 06, 2015 3:02 pm

robroy wrote:
I would love to be able to bite into a banana and see a disco light show playing in my living room.

Your wish is my command ...
here is the video ->
https://blog.georgmill.de/2015/07/02/mo ... odroid-c1/
Scroll down to "Update" and have some fun

chlorisdroid · Post by **chlorisdroid** » Mon Jul 06, 2015 3:07 pm

Jojo wrote: Don't get me wrong: I totally like you project ! Never seen something like that before and I'd like to see more!
Greetings

Well, there will be more, I hope. Of course you see the things behind, but maybe others (novices) don't

Post by **odroid** » Mon Jul 06, 2015 3:12 pm

WoW!

Most amazing video ever.
I couldn't expect any electrical relation between "Biting in to a banana" and "Flashing Disco Light".

Please make an article for the ODROID Magazine. I love this organic MIDI project.

chlorisdroid · Post by **chlorisdroid** » Mon Jul 06, 2015 3:14 pm

It's already in progress

robroy · Post by **robroy** » Tue Jul 07, 2015 7:00 am

For lack of better words, your banana disco video is both hilarious and stupendous. Stupendilarious!

Thank you for making my dream come true

We shall publish your fruit-based automation projects with pride in an upcoming issue of ODROID Magazine.

chlorisdroid · Post by **chlorisdroid** » Tue Jul 07, 2015 12:44 pm

robroy wrote:For lack of better words, your banana disco video is both hilarious and stupendous. Stupendilarious!

Well, it was YOUR outstanding idea. My job on the whole thing was to transform thoughts into hardware

Thank you for making my dream come true

De nada.

We shall publish your fruit-based automation projects with pride in an upcoming issue of ODROID Magazine.

This makes me proud, too. Thanks.

Jojo · Post by **Jojo** » Tue Jul 07, 2015 11:38 pm

Outstanding

!

Maybe you could put on some non-conductive gloves, that the disco only lights up for lets say 5s, if you BITE the banana. Until the next bite... and the amazing party can go on

!

chlorisdroid · Post by **chlorisdroid** » Wed Jul 08, 2015 1:21 am

For somebody saying it is totally useless u seem to spend a lot of time with improving this project

It's a pity, but you have to implement that big feature in your own fork of "grapes piano", sorry.

chlorisdroid · Post by **chlorisdroid** » Tue Jul 14, 2015 8:50 pm

And here is another version of the grape piano WITHOUT MPR121 but only 18 paperclips

https://blog.georgmill.de/2015/07/09/to ... di-device/

Post by **odroid** » Wed Jul 15, 2015 10:12 am

Very affordable. The conductive paperclip is a nice idea.

BTW, I met an error when I compiled your sketch file due to a missing "MIDI" library.
Should I use this lib? https://github.com/FortySevenEffects/ar ... es/tag/4.2

chlorisdroid · Post by **chlorisdroid** » Thu Jul 16, 2015 5:31 am

Yes, of course. I simply forgot to mention it on my website. Thanks for your response. The link is now added.
Normaly it is not necessary to add the whole library for just generating some simple MIDI output. But if somebody wants to develop the sketch any further with more detailed MIDI output it makes things much easier. Thanks to fourty seven effects anyway

Post by **odroid** » Thu Jul 16, 2015 11:55 am

Thank you for the update. I could build your sketch file with the library.
Time to find my 20+ year's old Roland SC88 box ... but I can't recall where it was stored.

I hope software driven MIDI sounds on the C1 can generate reasonable audio quality.

chlorisdroid · Post by **chlorisdroid** » Thu Jul 16, 2015 12:28 pm

To make it even easier for beginners to test und run the code I just removed the MIDI library and added some code to generate the MIDI notes myself. Please download the sketch again from my website and test it.

Tested the touchduino together with odroid-c1. The only thing that reduces the sound quality is my poor usb soundcard.

UPDATE: And...yes, you are right. MIDI is very, very ooooooold, but: very good. Maybe it's a good plan to take some time and make the litte arduino talk OSC (http://opensoundcontrol.org/)?

chlorisdroid · Post by **chlorisdroid** » Thu Jul 16, 2015 4:47 pm

odroid wrote: I hope software driven MIDI sounds on the C1 can generate reasonable audio quality.

Here is an example of what the ODROID-C1 can do with 3 different MIDI hardware devices at the same time ->
https://blog.georgmill.de/2015/07/16/od ... kes-music/

Post by **odroid** » Thu Jul 16, 2015 4:55 pm

Appreciate the update!
I can play a simple song with the simpliest 18 keyboards composed MIDI !
Even the multi-touch events(chords) seem to be working.

Only a few minor issues..
<1> The capacitive touch sensing is not accurate. My body might generate wrong capacitance.
<2> Fixed constant velocity of the note. Yes! I need more accurate capacitive sensors to implement the velocity.
So! I'm heavilly considering to buy a couple of MPR121 breakout boards with a bunch of grapes now.

I've learned a lot from you.

chlorisdroid · Post by **chlorisdroid** » Thu Jul 16, 2015 6:05 pm

Simply attach a combination of copper- and aluminum foil to each sensor and the values will be much better. Will just test it out what fits best.

chlorisdroid · Post by **chlorisdroid** » Fri Jul 17, 2015 2:18 pm

This gives an impression of what is possible with that little idea ->
https://youtu.be/FvhaPlku4xo
or
https://youtu.be/bxLYWb-56uA

chlorisdroid · Post by **chlorisdroid** » Fri Jul 17, 2015 10:32 pm

odroid wrote:Appreciate the update!
Only a few minor issues..
<1> The capacitive touch sensing is not accurate. My body might generate wrong capacitance.
<2> Fixed constant velocity of the note. Yes! I need more accurate capacitive sensors to implement the velocity.

Here is the solution for these issues ->
https://blog.georgmill.de/2015/07/17/od ... sic-part2/

Post by **odroid** » Sat Jul 18, 2015 1:04 am

OMG! You found a nice solution with the copper coins. Brilliant Idea.
BTW, I couldn't find where is ".info" file to enable the velocity feature.

chlorisdroid · Post by **chlorisdroid** » Sat Jul 18, 2015 2:42 am

odroid wrote:OMG! You found a nice solution with the copper coins. Brilliant Idea.
BTW, I couldn't find where is ".info" file to enable the velocity feature.

OMG! It is the .ino file that I mean.

It was a typo, sorry.
To enable velocity change "127" to "value" in

Code: Select all

midiMessage(noteOn, i+(note_start), 127);

My first idea was to do it with 100 $ notes ,but there 2 reasons I didn't:
1. I don't have eighteen 100 $ notes.
2. I would need a lot of water to keep the note wet to be conductive

But it would have been a really valuable instrument then.

Post by **odroid** » Sun Jul 19, 2015 7:26 pm

Okay. It is reasonable. $1800 is too much expensive.

chlorisdroid · Post by **chlorisdroid** » Wed Jul 22, 2015 10:43 pm

Good news! Today I was able to port the sketch to work with an MCP23017 16 bit port expander. This chip is attached via I2C to the Arduino or other micro controllers. You now have the possibility to add 8 of these chips to the I2C bus. That gives you additional 128 GPIOs. With my new library you can use each of these pins as a touch sensitive input. So the TouchDuinoX is born

Video on https://blog.georgmill.de/2015/07/22/touchduinoxtended/

Post by **odroid** » Wed Jul 22, 2015 10:58 pm

I love your naming sense. The TouchDuinoX

chlorisdroid · Post by **chlorisdroid** » Thu Jul 30, 2015 5:09 pm

Maybe TouchDuino XL sounds even better (and has more features)
Touch sensing 64 inputs for midi keyboard input. The digital inputs do not only return bitwise (On/Off) but return values between 0-127, so you can change e.g. velocity of your sounds.
48 analog inputs to connect whatever kind of analog sensors you want to control your Midi devices. In this example only a potentiometer for volume control and a piezo for sound generation are attached to the analog muxer.
https://blog.georgmill.de/2015/07/30/touchduino-xl/

Post by **odroid** » Thu Jul 30, 2015 5:24 pm

The analog mux is a great idea which expands the channels with the 128 level detecting.

I enjoyed the magic water synthesizer in your latest video.

Yes! XL must be much better than X

chlorisdroid · Post by **chlorisdroid** » Thu Jul 30, 2015 9:58 pm

The analog expander isn't used to expand the 128 (possible) inputs of which I actually only use 64. The analog inputs are used to connect e.g. a diy midi foot pedal working with a pololu qtr1-a distance (https://www.pololu.com/product/958) sensor to pitchbend the sound. That is really funny

48 sensors for realizing a brand new midi controller. Wow.

chlorisdroid · Post by **chlorisdroid** » Tue Aug 25, 2015 3:10 pm

odroid wrote:The analog mux is a great idea which expands the channels with the 128 level detecting.
I enjoyed the magic water synthesizer in your latest video. Yes! XL must be much better than X

The piano sources are now available from here https://blog.georgmill.de/2015/07/02/mo ... odroid-c1/
or directly from https://blog.georgmill.de/wp-content/up ... hMidix4.py.

After having finished my holidays yesterday I'm trying to build a magic water synth and a magic beer and wine synth for those who want to test the touch synth in bars or at the beach. If I'm succesfull in building it, there will be a description incl. video on my website soon. This synth could be connected to max. 128 glasses of beer or wine. So be careful using it! Please wish me luck.

Post by **odroid** » Tue Aug 25, 2015 5:07 pm

I like this alcoholic synthesizer project ! You are a genius

water... beer.... wine... whiskey and tequila.
Or colorful cocktail will be fantastic at the beach.

chlorisdroid · Post by **chlorisdroid** » Sun Sep 06, 2015 12:59 am

odroid wrote:You are a genius

I know, i know .... hicks... buuuurps.
Cause I'm drunk today and the rest of the weekend the Alco-Piano will follow later next week. Goooosh, my head aches, oooooh. Shouldn't try Beethoven's 9th with that piano.

chlorisdroid · Post by **chlorisdroid** » Mon Sep 07, 2015 8:53 pm

Here the (more or less) serious update for the graped piano ->
https://blog.georgmill.de/2015/09/07/hi ... odroid-c1/

Post by **odroid** » Mon Sep 07, 2015 9:37 pm

You made it again.

I love the Aluminium foil based big touch plate. It can be a nice drum.

BTW, how did you enable the MIDI sound on the HiFi Shield without the mmap access?
Please post an instruction on the other your thread.
http://forum.odroid.com/viewtopic.php?f=115&t=15652

chlorisdroid · Post by **chlorisdroid** » Wed Sep 09, 2015 7:17 pm

Some info about it in the most recent video about the Graped Midi Piane DeLuxe ->
https://blog.georgmill.de/2015/09/09/gr ... rlin-2015/

chlorisdroid · Post by **chlorisdroid** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 3:08 pm

Wow! The graped piano was a full success on the Maker Faire 2015 in Berlin (http://makerfaire.berlin/maker/mobiles- ... odroid-c1/)

There is a little video on http://www.heise.de/make/meldung/Maker- ... 37884.html
and from Donald Bell from makezine.com
http://makezine.com/2015/10/05/first-ma ... miss-beat/
where the piano is presented as one of the highlights of that Maker Faire

Most of all little children and their parents had a lot of fun. But also some delegations from Asia and America came with film crews and interviewed me.

Here https://blog.georgmill.de/2015/10/06/ma ... ays-after/you can read and see everything about a very basic Midi controller with a special transparent and printed conductive foil from PolyIC http://www.polyic.com/

Thanks for your support in this forum, too.

Post by **odroid** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 3:17 pm

Congratulations! I found your grapes piano in this video at around 40~45 seconds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=48&v=9Tt3IuFcvSs

chlorisdroid · Post by **chlorisdroid** » Fri Oct 09, 2015 3:15 am

odroid wrote:Congratulations! I found your grapes piano in this video at around 40~45 seconds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=48&v=9Tt3IuFcvSs

Thanks for posting it. And thanks for the article in the Odroid-Magazin august 2015. It was really a lot of fun (for me and for little and grown up visitors).
Small piece of hardware + some grapes = lot of fun for everyone

chlorisdroid · Post by **chlorisdroid** » Fri Oct 09, 2015 2:12 pm

A lot of visitors asked me if it is possible to light up a grape when it is touched with an led. Of course that is possible, but for 48 grapes it is a lot of additional hardware. To keep the construction as easy as possible and have more flexibility I constructed a 2D laser pointer system with 2 stepper motors and a conventionell laser pinter to illuminate all the grapes of my piano. The camera makes a bright white spot out of a grape when the laser beam hits it. But in reality the green beam makes the grape light up in a very bright green color: Magic

https://blog.georgmill.de/2015/10/09/la ... ped-piano/

Post by **odroid** » Fri Oct 09, 2015 3:08 pm

I simply thought you made a big LED matrix. But it is totally wrong.
Laser beam is much more gorgeous lighting.

BTW, the response time of the motors should be slightly faster.

chlorisdroid · Post by **chlorisdroid** » Fri Oct 09, 2015 4:11 pm

odroid wrote:BTW, the response time of the motors should be slightly faster.

Yes, of course. Just look at the second video (updated a few seconds ago). It's the same link.
It shows the speeded up stepper motors. The little one is a 28-BYJ48 which is apparently much too slow. So I'll have to use 2 big ones and leave this version for future camera pan and tilt projects

Post by **odroid** » Fri Oct 09, 2015 8:20 pm

Yes, one motor on the X-axis is much more responsive.

What is the part number of the faster step-motor?

robroy · Post by **robroy** » Fri Oct 09, 2015 10:21 pm

Please do a followup article for the magazine when you have the laser working automatically! It is really awesome

chlorisdroid · Post by **chlorisdroid** » Fri Oct 09, 2015 11:14 pm

odroid wrote:Yes, one motor on the X-axis is much more responsive.
What is the part number of the faster step-motor?

It is a japanese stepper motor from Vexta
bought here for about 9,00 EUR each

They are driven with 2 ULN2003A darlington arrays.

https://www.pollin.de/shop/dt/NTE0OTg2O ... 0_8_A.html

Mod.No. PXB44H-02AA-C8
specs:
VEXTA 2 phase stepper motor model PXB44H-02AA-C8 with a 0.8 Amp per phase rating at 6 VDC. It is 1.8 degree per step and 200 steps per revolution with a single 5 mm round shaft. It is a 1.67 inch motor (42mm) (NEMA 17) and has 6 wires that come out to an inline connector.

Tested with two of them directly connected with double sided tape: passed successfully

chlorisdroid · Post by **chlorisdroid** » Fri Oct 09, 2015 11:43 pm

robroy wrote:Please do a followup article for the magazine when you have the laser working automatically! It is really awesome

First I have to get it running for the next event which will be http://berlin2015.codemotionworld.com/ from 2.-3. November 2015 in Berlin again. There will be a little Maker Space where the mobile-laser-illuminated-graped-midi-realtime-synth-piano-with-OSC- (open sound control) -support (ooooouuuff, what a word) will be shown again

But as soon I have time enough I'll write a followup.

Post by **odroid** » Sat Oct 10, 2015 3:13 pm

Thank you for the specification. It looks great. I found the same one in Korea.

I hope we can see a laser driven MIDI fruit keyboard on our Magazine too.