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Michael, of KOOP Devices, is a fan of digital music-making gadgets — his newest design of which packs a lot of the vary of an 88-key keyboard right into a compact machine constructed utilizing Cherry MX keyboard switches backed by bottom-out switches for velocity sensing.
Based mostly on the sooner Melodicade, which used arcade buttons, the 3D-printed Melodicade MX makes use of Cherry MX mechanical keyboard switches with custom-printed key caps. Whereas that will normally be sufficient for an enter machine, Michael sought to make the Melodicade MX extra usable for musical tasks by giving every swap the flexibility to sense velocity — by popping tactile switches underneath the mechanical switches.
“With this particular keyswitch and tact swap pairing,” Michael writes, “there’s a couple of 1500 microsecond journey on laborious hits, 6000µs on medium hits, and above 30000µs, I simply assume a lightweight key press and ship it. Because the key generally does not fully backside out on mild hits, it is higher than simply dropping a notice. Dynamic vary is not what a retailer purchased piano would provide, however there’s positively a noticeable distinction between mild and laborious hits.”
Curiously, the Melodicade MX does not depend on a {custom} PCB: As an alternative, all the pieces is held within the 3D_printed chassis and wired immediately. “I believe that is previous the purpose the place a smart individual would have designed and despatched away for a PCB,” Michael admits, “however I somewhat like the concept of retaining issues unrefined sufficient {that a} dummy like myself can assemble by hand with the assistance of a 3D printer and a few off-the-shelf elements.”
There isn’t any PCB contained in the 3D-printed housing, simply hand-wiring. (📷: KOOP Devices)
The completed Melodicade MX covers over six octaves — virtually a full 88-key keyboard’s value — however takes up a surprisingly small quantity of desk area because of the Wicki-Hayden format usually related to hexagonal keys on concertinas and bandoneons, created by Kaspar Wicki within the Eighteen Nineties then refined by Brian Hayden within the Eighties.
The total construct information, which Michael estimates would price round $180 in supplies when ignoring minimal order portions on some elements, is offered on the KOOP Devices web site; Arduino supply code for the driving Teensy 4.1 board is offered on GitHub underneath the reciprocal GNU Normal Public License 3, and the 3D print information on Thingiverse underneath the Inventive Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.
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