Pseudonymous maker “thisisnomine,” hereafter merely “Nomine,” has constructed a piano with a distinction: the engaging wood machine makes sound utilizing stepper motors, fairly than hammers hitting strings.
“This was impressed by a lot of tasks folks have made that include motors programmed to spin at totally different speeds to play music. Nevertheless, only a few enable a person to play them like an instrument,” Nomine explains. “As an alternative, they’re all pre-set songs, the place notes have been instructed to play for a sure time period and the person would merely hit a button to begin a track. I wished to create one thing that appeared and felt like an instrument, however secretly had an digital skeleton.”
That instrument is undeniably eye-catching from the skin: its oval physique, with a big gap within the center for the sound to flee, is adorned with 4 half-spheres above a piano keyboard created from round copper buttons. Constructed from sapele wooden and anigre veneer, its housing goals to reflect the aesthetics of a stringed instrument — and likewise, its creator admits, “does job of hiding the tangle of wires that lurk beneath the keyboard.”
The skin of the instrument is perhaps wooden, however its innards are all digital: two Adafruit MPR121 12-key capacitive touch-sensor breakout boards are related to the keyboard keys, whereas the half-spheres hook up with a quartet of NEMA 17 stepper motors related to A4988 drivers. The whole lot is then managed by an Adafruit Metro Mini 328-5V board — turning a contact of every copper key right into a rotation of the motors.
The underside of the keyboard hides a “tangle of wires,” by the creator’s personal admission. (📷: thisisnomine)
“When music is made historically, the sound is generated by one thing (both a string, a reed, or a membrane) vibrating at a sure frequency,” Nomine explains. “The frequency is what determines the notice, a better frequency being a excessive notice (like a flute), and a low frequency being a low notice (like a tuba).
“This is similar idea that permits the stepper motors to create music. The velocity at which they spin controls the frequency of the ‘clicks’ generated by the steps, which suggests when the motor is spinning slowly it creates a low notice, and the quicker it spins the upper the notice will get.”
Nomine has printed a full write-up to Instructables, together with the venture’s supply code — although with out a wiring diagram, “as a result of once I was creating this instrument I did not write [it] down, and it has now been many months.”