Building Midi Controller from Toy Piano

[Nirtseg]

Hi everyone. I've had a project in mind for a while now but I'm a novice and I need some help. I have an old yamaha psr-172 and what I want to do is scrap the built in voices and just use it as midi controller with a custom built cabinet. This keyboard already has a midi function which I have been using but I find the casing ugly and the built-in voices useless. So I'm looking for a way to bypass the normal keyboard voices and features and just use it as a midi controller.

Any help is appreciated thanks.

[rexman77]

This might be a good place to start http://metku.net/index.html?path=mods/moo6/index_eng
Keep all the internals save for the speakers and put them in a nice case.

[bftucker]

This might be a good place to start http://metku.net/index.html?path=mods/moo6/index_eng
Keep all the internals save for the speakers and put them in a nice case.

Very nice. And very easy! I have a yamaha with a broken display that I found in the garbage that has a better keyboard than my Oxygen 49.

Thanks.

[Cynosure]

The easiest method is as was already suggested - just repackaging it in a new case.

The alternative is to use an Arduino with MUX and DEMUX chips to scan the keys and create the MIDI messages. This method obviously requires more work and testing, but you get the option of adding extra stuff like pitch bend and mod wheels, MIDI CC pots, pads, or even an arpeggiator. There is already a MIDI library available for Arduino, so half of the coding work is already done.

[exoro]

Great project! I actually wrote an article about this topic a while back. It basically went over the methods used in a pretty great video I found.

Hope this helps:

https://youtu.be/lXX8v-ZW6Tk