Project: Compartmental piano

Motive

Motivation: 

To learn to play the piano is a daunting task due to the required skill needed even before a simple nursery rhyme can be played. These skills include music theory, finger positioning, identifying notes and many more. We wanted to remove this barrier so that the joy of playing a piano could reach to more people regardless of whether they are masters at the craft or just want to impress their peers and family members. Let’s make piano learning enjoyable and easy.

Novelty:
Currently, in the market it is very rare and close to impossible to find a piano that enable the user to swap octaves so that they don’t find move their fingers too much to play a decent song they hear on the radio. Our product is able to fill this void by providing the user the ability to swap, add or remove octaves from their piano so as to customize it to be able to play their songs with ease. Beginners can choose to learn simple songs over just an octave. Only when the user is ready to move on to the next level, he/she can obtain the next set of octaves to begin advanced piano skills. User can configure octaves placement and focuses on desired octaves.

Impact:
Flexibility of learning the piano on the go. User can choose to play certain octaves. Because of the flexibility, this electronic piano becomes portable and compartmental.

Circuit diagrams

Figure 1: Tone generator subsystem

Figure 2: Volume control sub-system

Figure 3: Small portion of the whole system being integrated

















Design Outline
This has two systems, which means we need two power sources for the systems to work simultaneously. The tone generator needs a 3.0 V for power supply, and the Volume control needs a 13.0 V for power supply.

The Tone generator subsystem consists of
          1. 2 Resistors to cut down the 3 volt source by ½ to supply voltage for the above mentioned resistors [This is the connection found between R3 and R4]
          2. 1 Operational amplifier (Opamp) is used as a frequency generator, which in turn will produce different tones, depending on button being pressed.
          3. Various resistors for the various tones
          4. 1 capacitor for the generation of square war
          5. Push-buttons
                    a. 5 Red
                    b. 5 Blue
                    c. 5 Yellow
                    d. Rest are greens

The volume control subsystem consist of
          1. 2 Resistors that define the middle level from which the high and low logic level can be defined [They are denoted as R13 and R14 in Figure 2]
          2. 2 Resistors to cut down the 13 volt source by ½ to supply voltage for the above mentioned resistors [This is the connection found between R11 and R12]
          3. 1 Operational amplifier (Opamp) is used as a comparator to determine the output level with respect to the input
          4. 1 trimmer to change the level of loudness [R14 in Figure 2]
          5. 13 volt source to ensure that the variation made by the trimmer is noticeable by the human ear.

Photographs of your prototype
Stage 1

Stage 2

Stage 3