Cybrid - a DIY MIDI controller with grand piano action

JayKominek Del Vento @JayKominek since we are discussion this, I actually have concerns that the "holes" in your things will be too big for the size of the hammers and that it will eventually cause too much wear on the hammer sides.

They're exactly the size of the CNY70, to the point where my latest prints of the protector actually snap onto the PCB and stay in place through friction. Making them smaller would be challenging. I suppose i could add some overhang around the top of the CNY70. Probably more useful for the smaller treble hammers. B7 and C8 might fit in the hole existing holes. But A0 isn't.

Del Vento Moreover it looks to me that it'd make alignment more critical.

My "hammer stop rail" thing holding the sensors is positioned at an angle to roughly keep its middle lined up with the impact line of the hammers. Beyond that, I just kind of try to line them up with the hammers by eye, and it seems fine. I've only been putting sensors on the bass hammers so far since that end is closer to my desk. With their rotation, they're the least amenable to this whole process, and it's been going ok. I have designed a new board which rotates the sensors 12 deg to match the hammers. I expect that'll make life nicer.

Sorry I probably explained myself wrong, let me try again. I suppose the CNY70 will be about 5mm "deep" inside the "holes" of your hammer stop rail. My hammers are 10mm wide and the CNY70 in the direction you are placing them are more than 7mm wide. So when the hammer will be hitting the stop rail, it will have less than 1.5mm on each side. If that is correct:

• You will have to align everything with 1.5mm accuracy, which is tedious but ok for individual hammer sensors, but it can be problematic if you use the 4x boards, since you need to compromize to align 4 sensor in one board (or at least so it is in my action which does not have the hammers/keys so perfectly spaced)
• Even if the problem above does not apply to your action, out of 10mm width of hammer felt, you are using only the most weak 1.5mm on each side to stop the hammer (and even less in one side if the alignment becomes suboptimal). With my understanding of hammer felt, I'd expect substantial wear and tear in this situation.

Obviously it's possible that I totally misunderstood your design 😀 so if you'd like to continue this discussion perhaps you can post a picture of a hammer about to hit the stop rail (enough distance left to just glimpse the "hole" where the CNY70 is).

JayKominek Making them smaller would be challenging.

I meant: use the smaller sensors and hence make the hammer stop rail smaller to match those sensors, so the "holes" will be substantially smaller almost to the point of irrelevance for the hammers hitting them.

@gzpiano I hadn't followed your project at all until now, but I noticed @RIP mentioned it in other discussions (and I decided to reply here since Del Vento is a bit strict about off-topic in any of his discussion, nothing wrong at all with that!) and just watched briefly your progress on your YouTube channel. You've made quite a progress, I need to familiarize myself more with your exact solution which I believe is based on ADC-s (similar to Del Vento and Jay) but so far all looks excellent. Couldn't help but notice some influences from Cybrid too 😀 Like e.g. rail placement and shape, the tiny sensor boards, etc. I hope you don't hate me for these if they turn out to be sub-optimal and if you were thinking I chose them for a reason. Nope, there was no reason, only whatever first happened to appear in my head as a possible solution, never really considered alternative placements/aproaches/solutions... 🤦🏻‍♂️

Cheers! 🍻

@CyberGene

Thanks!

Yes, Cybrid was/is a big inspiration (linked on my github page).

I like individual sensor boards because can use different actions. Good decision!

Presently 24 keys working and putting together a video with details.

40 keys + triple pedal in progress, as time permits.

I would like to have go at making Cybrid, in the pcb files, is there one for the holes?
I am new to this, so I am sorry if this is a stupid question.

Dean Coyle hi Dean and welcome. There are now other projects with better design and better documentation. See this:
https://pianoclack.com/forum/d/745-summary-of-digitalhybrid-piano-diy-projects

And RIP is your man, he’s very active.

Cybrid is being referenced over at PW:

https://forum.pianoworld.com/ubbthreads.php/topics/3448539/open-source-diy-hybrid-piano.html#Post3448539

Kudos to CG, and yes, I forgot to mention (earlier) that other than talkin’ pivots, samples, and actions, we have a few geniuses ‘round here that are worth their weight in gold.

Keep in mind that by ‘few’ I mean two: CG & Del Vento!

If anyone feels left out of the genius club, please do send me your resume, but keep in mind that ‘these two’ built their own hybrids, so don’t even bother if your achievement(s) top at “I made a bench,” for that will not get you into the club!

Seriously, keep it up you two!🙂

Pete14 but keep in mind that ‘these two’ built their own hybrid

Thank you and while technically true, mine still does not (yet!!) send MIDI data out for the full keyboard, only a couple of keys. Instead @gzpiano did a full keyboard (*), so I herein degrade myself to only quarter genius and raise him to full rank, for a grand total of 2.25 geniuses.

(*) yes I know you don't believe so here it's the proof, my dear unfaithful ones

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmziaIYKS1g

I'm still waiting for a while (could even be forever) - before I (can) start. Just patiently waiting for miniature (and maybe thinner/flatter) and possibly parallel-data versions of something like THIS.

And it will likely be interacting (as a system) with other sensors. Obviously, reliability is also a consideration, as well as convenience of replacement (not just of the particular part ordered, but also replacement of the part in the piano when the need arises). Even just doing it for two or three keys for fun should be ----- fun. Also - not because I need to. It will just be for the fun and sake of it.

Pete14 Kudos to CG, and yes, I forgot to mention (earlier) that other than talkin’ pivots, samples, and actions, we have a few geniuses ‘round here that are worth their weight in gold.

Keep in mind that by ‘few’ I mean two: CG & Del Vento!

Yep. 👍

This is so impressive, but so totally out of my wheelhouse. I’d really love to build my own to my specifications, as I think the end result would probably better than what Kawai and Yamaha are doing.

I feel like I might be comfortable with the physical part, but the coding part is where my brain refuses to take part in things. 😂

Kudos to you all for accomplishing it. This may open a lot of doors, and may even get some competition that pushes the big brands to do better.

QuasiUnaFantasia

thanks for linking

present work is improving note-to-note consistency. Remaking all 176 sensors to get full 3.3v range. And, thinking about mechanical changes to better align sensors.

Also considering design improvements so anyone finding the open source repo would have as good chance as possible at successfully making their own hybrid piano. Or silent piano.

gzpiano And, thinking about mechanical changes to better align sensors.

Not to brag, but I think that Jay and I made a really good design for this, which I described marginally at https://pianoclack.com/forum/d/637-build-your-own-hybrid-piano-step-four-the-cables and in detail at this other conversation (make sure you scroll to the last messages where more details are presented)

Yes that is a nice design.

For mine, flexibility was a primary goal. Resulted in one sensor per PCB so anyone can use for any key spacing. And each sensor contains all circuitry needed for independent operation.

Does make them more expensive.

I will research modifying my mainboard so it can support your sensor design too.

This is amazing. What a cool bunch of projects! Thanks for sharing so much detail.

I’m wondering if a huge chunk of this discussion can actually be served better in its own discussion 🙂 There’s a lot of useful research and info exchanged which doesn’t actually have a lot in common with the original and shamefully primitive Cybrid of mine 😀 @RIP , as a DIY mod, feel free to use the move functionality to extract most of the recent posts in a new discussion if you think it’s worth it.

Hi Cybrid,

I saw your work on YouTube, and it's pretty awesome!

I'm curious about how the touch of a DIY MIDI controller compares to existing hybrid solutions like the Kawai NV10S or Casio GP500. I've played the Casio GP500 before, but I think it falls short of simulating a real grand piano in terms of touch and sound.

Is it possible to get a grand piano keybed and install a silence system on it? I think this might be the quickest way to build a hybrid piano MIDI controller.

Dean Hi Dean, welcome to PianoClack. Cybrid is the project name which is derived from my forum alias CyberGene.

The touch is as good as the keyboard action that you use. In my case there are no alterations to the original piano action besides adding a stop rail, so the hammers hit it instead of strings. But that doesn’t affect the touch since the hammers in a piano are detached from the keyboard (and action) right before they hit the string, so you don’t feel the actual strike, regardless of whether there are strings or anything else.

And you’re correct in your observation about the Casio. Although it’s a fine digital piano action, it doesn’t function in the same way as a real piano action since it doesn’t have a real escapement which is a big part of why a real piano feels the way it feels. That’s been a heated debate on digital piano forums and some people love the Casio. Again, it’s a very fine digital piano, one of the best there but it’s not as good as a real piano action IMO.

As to feasibility of my project. It was one of the first ones, and since I’m an amateur in this field, some of the design decisions I made are not good. Nevertheless, it’s a very fine feeling controller and I have compared it against my Yamaha AvantGrand N1X. It would be a stretch to say it’s worse. I think a good DIY controller is not such a rocket-science and even a suboptimal design would work fine. The most important part is the action itself, whereas electronics and velocity scanning are rather secondary but others might disagree.

In any case, here on this forum you’ll find other people’s DIY projects that are much better than mine but what’s more important, they are made to be reproducible, so you may want to take a look at the following starting page where there are links to useful info and projects, maintained by @RIP who is a great source of information for these things, he’s also the DIY mod of the forum:

https://pianoclack.com/forum/d/745-summary-of-digitalhybrid-piano-diy-projects

Regarding how easy it is to find a keyboard with an action. I hear it depends on where you are. There are many old grands on sale in the US, as far as I understand. However, I live in Bulgaria and it was very difficult to find one.