A new Cantabile-Keyboard

Ok thanks. That should be satisfactory.

Anywayā€¦ the NUC will be replaced by a Skull Canyon. But this unit seems to be quite loudā€¦ I need to check that.

A friend of mine uses a Skull and runs massive cantabile-setups with it.

Just a short update! Here you can see how my keyboard works and how the displays show the names of the racks:
Link to video

Works very great!! thanks to @brad! The new SysEx-features are killing!

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DRROOOOOOLLLLLLL :star_struck::star_struck::star_struck::star_struck:

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Groovy post must be 20 characters

We do IT for small companies who ask us to securely dispose their worn out laptops. When the local computer recycling company closed I decided to disassemble the laptops myself, destroy the old HDDā€™s, replace broken hinges etc, upgrade to SSD and more RAM and then donate them to non-profits. Iā€™ve also been repairing music keyboards. It got me thinking of cobbling together parts from a keyboard and laptop into an ā€œall-in-oneā€.

FantomXRā€™s Cantabile-Keyboard is in a whole other class. Not sure Kickstarter would be the way to go with this, you really need be careful with those, people get bent of shape if you delay to re-work something.

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Cool! Can you donate a laptop to me? I donā€™t profit.

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One of my non-profits runs an excellent music venue that is building up a music education program. Mostly they go to several churches.

Hey Fred

Looks like youā€™ll need to file your 501( c )(3) with the IRS for non-profit status. Many people have 'em here on the westside. :laughing:

Wow, I always dreamed to build my own custom keyboards.
Unfortunately I have zero knowledge about how to do it :grin:
Iā€™m very impressed by your work, It looks amazing!

I was wondering, could you put a larger screen in it?
The weight must be light also, very important.

Haha Haha! Every marketing guy ever pissing off their engineers!

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Please over-engineer it with about 300 screws where 8 would have done.

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Thanks for the suggestion.

At first: I donā€™t make the keyboard heavier than it needs to be.
Regarding the screen: If I go to a screen-company and ask if they are able to make a screen for me which has only the specs I need, Iā€™d need to order at least 1000pc of that screen. You could imagine, that I can not afford this.
With that said: For now I have to take whatā€™s already available on the market. And to be honest: 10" is enough in a live performance. Another screen (like 13") will make the keyboard even bigger. At home Iā€™d recommend the user to connect an external screen via HDMI. Thatā€™s how I do it and it works perfect.

//edit: The screen has to fulfill certain aspects. Other screens that I found (I spent a lot of money buying several screens and test them) f.e. had a bad viewing angle. Another aspect is how do I control the brightness? The Waveshare 13.3" seemed a good alternative. But for adjusting the brightness youā€™d have to press the buttons on the back of the screen which are not accessible for the user. Another option would be to control the brightness with PWM. But that would require an arduino or something like that to make a PWM signal out of a potentiometer. You see, itā€™s not easy. The screen, which I use now, is perfect. Itā€™s reliable, bright, sharp has a great viewing angle and is very responsive.

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Fantastic job, Chris!
I always dreamed to build something like this, but time and some skills are missing!!

Thanks!

We are right now working on the next prototype which should be the last one before we reach beta-test-stage.
At the moment we are developing an audiointerface which takes more time than we expected. But the hardware-part is already done.

If you need any help with the PCB design, let me know. Thatā€™s what I do for a living. In fact, iā€™m in San Diego right now at an Alium Developer conference if anyone is playing out here tonight.

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Sounds great! Thanks for the offer!

The PCBs (which are most critical part inside of the keyboard) are designed by my colleague. He has about 40 years experience in PCB design.
But anyway: There are a bunch of PCBs that I design by myself and these can surely by improved because I learned it all by doing although Iā€™m in communication with my colleague who helps meā€¦

Anyway: Do you use Altium? Iā€™m on eagle.

Looks beautiful!
Out of interest, poly aftertouch?

Thanks!
Unfortunately no poly aftertouch. There is no company on the market who makes such keybeds.