A Thoroughly Modern Player Piano

Get ready to make an affordable 'modern player piano' from an Arduino computer and keyboard. This Fun and Intensive Do-it-Yourself STEM Building Project is designed to teach the basics of Music, Robots, Electronics and Computer Hardware and Software.

Player pianos were extremely popular 100 years ago, outselling both uprights and grand pianos. The pedals were pumped to generate the vacuum that depressed the keys. The brains of the piano were the paper rolls on which the music was recorded in holes punched in the paper. With today's technology, we can duplicate the player piano's music on a keyboard using mini-robots to activate the keys. For the brains we use a small but powerful Arduino microprocessor. This book shows how to construct the player piano using a Yamaha keyboard. It also provides the wiring charts to build a control box which connects the computer to the drivers and to the mini-robots. The software (called 'sketches' in Arduino-speak) which directs the computer to select and play the notes, is provided. Diagnostic software to check out the correct operation of the mini-robots is also provided. My goal is not just to describe an exciting project but mainly, it is to teach the basics of music, of simple robots as well as the operation of a small computer that controls the entire operation using a subset of the C++ programming language.

A good do-it-yourselfer should have no problem putting the player piano together with very few tools. I envision a father/daughter team or a group of high school students putting their heads together to resolve the wiring issues or the software coding for a once-in-a-lifetime learning experience.

Charlie Mathys was born in Brussels, Belgium and was brought to the US as a child but returned to Europe for his primary education. At age 14, he returned to the US to stay. He learned to speak English while attending high school and by age 20, he had graduated from college obtaining a BS degree in electrical engineering from Northeastern University. In 1963, he acquired an MBA degree from Boston College. After a 2-year stint in the US Army, he joined IBM at the very beginning of the computer era. He stayed at IBM for nearly 10 years before working for three small start-up companies doing computer research and development work hoping to find fame and fortune. He finally settled down at Mitre Corp, a non-profit, "think tank" corporation doing consulting work for the Electronic Systems division of the US Air Force. After retiring from Mitre, he combined his expertise in electronics and his love of boats to design an efficient electric motor for the propulsion of recreational boats. Several years later he designed an inexpensive RV conversion from a minivan. His skill and passion for computers and music challenged him to create a programmable modern player piano using an electronic keyboard and micro-computer, the results of his experiments are the subject of this book. He lives in Massachusetts and Florida with his wife. From there, they often visit the families of their children and grandchildren.