Where to buy Musical Keyboards

[Renate]

I don't know why everybody is getting all worked up about latency and how problematic USB is.
Most sounds that you generate have an attack profile anyway.
Are you considering that as latency?
Maybe we should make a non-causal MIDI system that starts the waveform before you press a key.

Just move your head closer to the speaker, you'll knock off a millisecond latency for every foot!

Ok, I'll measure up some actual keydown to start of waveform using separate USB MIDI devices on a host.

[MarkMLl]

@Renate: you're the first person who's said anything about latency. The issue I highlighted was the fact that if you want to build a USB master you're pretty much constrained to having a full-blown OS etc. in there.

MarkMLl

[Renate]

There's been a few comments about making things low latency.

In any case: I put a piezo xtal on top of a crappy USB MIDI keyboard.
From the keyboard, through Windows 10, to a USB MIDI synthesizer, to the 2nd scope channel.
The latency runs 7-9 mS.

Running without the keyboard, I can directly output notes in Windows 10 at 2500/second.
(That's actually about the rate that I play piano.)

[MarkMLl]

(Looks back) OK, I see one comment about latency which you pounced on and amplified. I'd be inclined to agree with you, but I'd point out that it was apparently the spur to fixing quite a lot of responsiveness problems in the Linux kernel... and I presume that the people who invested time in that had good reason to do so (and were able to make a good argument for their fixes being accepted by Torvalds).

I suspect that it's not so much latency of one channel in isolation, but the sort of problems that you can get if multiple channels get very slightly out of sync: the human ear is very good at picking up discontinuities.

MarkMLl

[Jan Audio]

Big things are hard to find in china because its not cheap to ship.

You could buy a casio keyboard somewhere and take out the circuit, it is complete circuit only for the keyboard.
It will be cheaper then buying all the keys.

[MarkMLl]

Big things are hard to find in china because its not cheap to ship.

Baby grands £4505, minimum order two. Entirely easy to find and Chinese suppliers are delightfully optimistic about shipping them half way round the World, the real issue is whether you're happy putting that amount of money on the table for something that you've not seen from a supplier who might not be entirely accurate when responding to your questions.

You could buy a casio keyboard somewhere and take out the circuit, it is complete circuit only for the keyboard.
It will be cheaper then buying all the keys.

That approach is much more hassle than it's worth. All the electronics, i.e. both chips and contacts, is likely to be on the same board, with no real demarcation between the subsystems. I've said it before: get something like a (second-hand) M-Audio keyboard which is strictly an input device with accessible MIDI.

MarkMLl

[rdl]

Running without the keyboard, I can directly output notes in Windows 10 at 2500/second.
(That's actually about the rate that I play piano.)

What?
2500 notes per second ?

[Renate]

2500 notes per second ?

Erm, you made me recheck my numbers, I don't know what I was thinking.
I can do the 128 notes in under 16-20 milliseconds.
That's 6400 to 8000 notes per second.

128 notes/(22.731081seconds-22.714545seconds) = 7750 notes/second

[ali_asadzadeh]

Big things are hard to find in china because its not cheap to ship.

You could buy a casio keyboard somewhere and take out the circuit, it is complete circuit only for the keyboard.
It will be cheaper then buying all the keys.

I'm thinking of a first prototype and then maybe build a batch of 100-500 units, so I think I should definitely find something in china, cause I want to make a kickstarter campaign.

[MarkMLl]

I'm thinking of a first prototype and then maybe build a batch of 100-500 units, so I think I should definitely find something in china, cause I want to make a kickstarter campaign.

Reasonable. Try Ali (i.e. specifically /not/ AliExpress etc.).

MarkMLl

[Jan Audio]

I'm thinking of a first prototype and then maybe build a batch of 100-500 units, so I think I should definitely find something in china, cause I want to make a kickstarter campaign.

Wow, i want to be your friend.

[themadhippy]

Do they sell bare bone keyboards, just the mechanical part or the keyboard with a simple board just generating MIDI?

wots the budget?
 http://www.midiplus.com/html/ak490.html
or
https://www.kawai.co.uk/products/digitalpianos/vpcseries/vpc1/

[ali_asadzadeh]

Wow, i want to be your friend.

Then help me find the bare bone keybaord!

[oPossum]

http://www.fatar.com/Pages/TP_8S.htm

They will typically want you to meet some MOQ (minimum oder quantity).

[ali_asadzadeh]

http://www.fatar.com/Pages/TP_8S.htm

They will typically want you to meet some MOQ (minimum oder quantity).

I have emailed them, But got no response
Do we have other brands? specially manufacturers in china? (Chinese members please help )
we need to find the bare bone keypad, probably with some kind of FPC or flat cable to connect to a custom Board (my designed board)

[Selectech]

Try here, under "Spare Parts", Keybeds.
http://www.doepfer.de/home_e_2019.htm

[Jan Audio]

No you need to find out where doepfer buys them.

Ali, why no sound-module ?, its more realistic.

[oPossum]

From http://www.doepfer.de/zubeh_e.htm ...

The keybeds used in our keyboards are available as spare parts (made by Fatar/Italy, www.fatar.com).

Most of the small synth manufactures buy from Fatar.

[Bassman59]

Big things are hard to find in china because its not cheap to ship.

You could buy a casio keyboard somewhere and take out the circuit, it is complete circuit only for the keyboard.
It will be cheaper then buying all the keys.

I'm thinking of a first prototype and then maybe build a batch of 100-500 units, so I think I should definitely find something in china, cause I want to make a kickstarter campaign.

As I said before, Fatar is the only manufacturer of musical-instrument keyboards. Maybe there's someone in China making them. dunno. But all of the mainline manufacturers of electronic keyboards use Fatar mechanisms.

[NiHaoMike]

The issue I highlighted was the fact that if you want to build a USB master you're pretty much constrained to having a full-blown OS etc. in there.

Not really, you can implement USB on a microcontroller with bare metal code. A RTOS is useful to handle other tasks like scanning the keyboard matrix.

[Jan Audio]

Whats the difference between source code for a PIC MCU and a OS ?
Put in some effort, it is fun to make, what are you scared of ?

Get rid of that arduno copy and paste mentallity please.

[MarkMLl]

Whats the difference between source code for a PIC MCU and a OS ?
Put in some effort, it is fun to make, what are you scared of ?

Quite simply, the level of complexity to support a USB host is overkill in the current case. It appeared to be overkill right from the start, and when OP pointed out that he was hoping to have a small-run product that impression became a certainty.

Get rid of that Arduino copy and paste mentality please.

Now that is gratuitously obnoxious. Or to descend to your level, damn rude.

p.s. I've taken the liberty of correcting your spelling.

MarkMLl

[MarkMLl]

The issue I highlighted was the fact that if you want to build a USB master you're pretty much constrained to having a full-blown OS etc. in there.

Not really, you can implement USB on a microcontroller with bare metal code. A RTOS is useful to handle other tasks like scanning the keyboard matrix.

OK, I've now got a small box here that does implement a USB host, but a review http://sandsoftwaresound.net/review-midiplus-miniengine-usb/ does comment that it's an unusual capability.

I've been keeping my eyes open for something like this for a while, since MIDI is useful on servers for monitoring purposes. It's getting increasingly unusual on expansion cards (and those cards that are available tend to have dodgy software support) and software emulators tend to have access rights issues etc. which I'm sure will be fixed RSN.

Input options are either MIDI (via an adapter) or USB host, it can't be plugged directly into a PC despite having a micro-USB socket which turns out to be power only. It works out of the box with a USB->MIDI adapter, and also connected directly to the USB port on a keyboard (i.e. box acts as host, keyboard as slave).

Internally, it's got a "Dream" SAM2635, an STM32F105, and an MXIC MX29LV640-EBTI (if my scrawled notes can be believed). I've not attempted more detailed reverse engineering, since I've bought this with a fairly urgent need rather than as a toy.

MarkMLl