Louisville Soundbuilders

I'm working on these gigantic boards now...

Here are some pics of the PCBs for the project:

Some part numbers of components being used on this project..

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Let's try that again:

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Ah OK, just insert the freaking link!

This made the Make blog:

Here from the makezine blog.

I've been building over the past couple of weeks a project which is vaguely similar to yours except I couldn't find a way to make the keys velocity sensitive.  Your idea is elegant and I just wish it didn't involve me having to de-solder all of my switches to cut the bottoms off :-)

Watching with extreme interest.

Also, if you guys need someone else to bulk buy or otherwise assist with scaling the hexagonal key manufacture please contact me.  I need about 260 of them since I'm building one to the Janko format as opposed to the Axis64.  (ie, 6 x 45).  I've made some prototypes on the hackerspace CNC but they're just not working for me.

Oh, I'm also putting LEDs to make where the white/black keys are.  The idea being that when I switch formats from harmonic table to janko to wicki/hayden etc - the LEDs will follow.

Thanks,



Red

Hello Red. Welcome!

Hi, this is Nick, the guy working on the keycaps. I ordered a sample size of a mold rubber that i think will work for our project, TinSil 70-60. I'm going to try a diy injection mold with a single keycap. If it works we can make a second mold to do multiple keys at a time, or just slowly trudge along making one at a time. 

Wooden keycaps would be the easiest for me to use for sure as I could just mill them on the CNC.

Here is some gcode to mill the female connector for the keycaps:  http://red.pwn.me/spike42.nc

The format I'm building is 5 rows of 45 keys.  Each PCB contains a 4x5 matrix of both keys and LEDs.

I really need to keep the keycaps clear (or at least translucent) as the LEDs are mounted in the keyswitches.

gigasturtz: What material are you injecting?

i was thinking abs plastic but i'm open to suggestion. I've never done this technique before so i'm just going to try different things out.

I'm not an expert in such things.  Btw, if you're not on the diykeyboard mailing list I know the people on there would be excited to read about your project.


Red

Ah, I see now. I hadn't thought of LED mounting on the switch! Is it a through-hole for a single LED or could you do 3-pin for bi-color?

Two lead LEDs.

The primary reason for the build in the first place was to make something that I could use to experiment with different isomorphic layouts and use it to research which layout works best for me and the type of music that I compose / perform.

So, I sacrificed things like velocity sensitivity and other performance-based criteria and focused entirely on building something designed just for the research.

Once this keyboard is done and I've made my decision on layout I can then re-build using velocity sensitivity and opaque (probably wooden) keys colored correctly.

does anyone have a prototype of the keycap that i could use to make the mold? The best would be a nonporous material, but I could probably make a wood one work. Thanks!

Dude, definitely look into generalizing the firmware to any keyboard layout. C-Thru realized pretty late that it's REALLY useful to be able to to specify one of multiple layouts (like wicki-hayden or chromatic button accordian).

They key layout is just a lookup table in the software, so adding alternative layouts will be simple.  The Midibox STM 32 core also has an LCD drive onboard, eventually I'll add a UI for selecting key layouts, midi channels, etc.

That's too sweet. Looking forward to the finished product!

Hey Red, what hackerspace are you with?

I have attached the schematic for the board, the switches and diodes are not included.  I placed those in layout without drawing them into the schematic first.

First post. I followed some links here looking to DIY an isomorphic keyboard. I'm really excited about this development - I've been wanting an isomorphic board for years now, watched the sad fate of the thummer unfold, etc. 

We ordered 10 pcbs and those are all spoken for.  For a quantity of 10 they were ~$70 each, since there are 2 boards per keyboard it ends up being ~$140 for the PCBs.  I will be posting the gerber files soon after I correct some errors and make some improvements to the boards we have.

@psioniclabs - I'm at Hackerspace Charlotte.  http://hsclt.org/

Hmm, I figured they'd be in that range. I'm a big fan of fabbed boards, and I design a lot of them for effects pedals and synth gear, but for this I may try to design a home-etched board, since part density is low enough to make that pretty attractive. Looking forward to seeing those gerbers, and when I finish up a layout that can be etched, I will be sure to post the file here for others who want to make them. Awesome work, guys, really glad to see people working with this kind of stuff.

Thanks living.

We (Hackerspace Charlotte) just finished the buildout of our 24"x24" CNC machine.  That may be big enough to fab something like this.  My main concern is that I will blunt one of the PCB etching bits before it's completed :-)

When I started the layout one of my intentions was to keep the top and bottom layers separate using the bottom layer for the cherry switches and the top layer for the tact switches (which are surface mount).  The intention was to have a design that would be more home-etch or home-mill friendly, each board would only need a single layer.  I still think such a layout is possible, but it started to get tough when the scan matrix (24x16) didn't match up with the key matrix (21 columns with varying numbers of rows), and since I new we planned to order the pcbs I took the easy way out and started adding vias and jumping layers.

One major improvement to the layout that I want to implement is using connectors to make contact between the 2 pcbs.  With the current design the 2 boards are soldered together, which makes troubleshooting a huge pain.

I see how that would be a problem.

I ended up not building a matrix of switches but instead just putting one key per pin of chained  74HC165s.  I'm using a parallax propeller CPU to drive everything.



Red

The AXiS-64 clone looks great. The implementation of velocity sensitivity is a clever hack. The Wicki-Hayden layout has some advantages over the AXiS-64 layout. Its basically the same as the AXiS-64, rotated 90 degrees. There would be one keyboard for each hand, flats under the thumbs, each keyboard the mirror image of the other. Please consider building an instrument with the Wicki-Hayden note layout. See for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicki-Hayden_note_layout

Oh what's the app?

I want to provide some additional information here.

I've been looking into making one of these things myself, but the keycaps remain an obstacle. I've made inquiries about costs to various companies, and the cheapest I could manage was 1600 usd for 1000 caps. I guess if some kind of bulk order could be managed we'd save a lot of money by handling it that way.

The problem for me is that I live in Sweden, which is basically entirely devoid of people interested in this kind of project. If any kind of bulk order is made in the US I'd like to know about it as long as one delivery to Sweden is possible.

Actually, now that I see the circuit boards I'd like to know if THOSE can be bought from you as well. That would be extremely handy, seeing that I'm having difficulties securing a workshop for the drilling, and making the etching myself I don't know how I'd go about to mark the holes for drilling with the precision I need.

Edit: Naturally, if it turns out that the offer I have been given is the best one possible, we could perhaps arrange for having it done in sweden and then delivered to the US. I don't know how much the shipping would cost, however.

Does anyone have a cad file of the key cap? If so it would help me tremendeously when investigating the possibility of having the key caps injection moulded.

I'll ask around tonight at our physical meeting if anyone has a cad file of the key cap. 

Yes I managed to figure that out :D

I hope you succeed with your PCB. I'm looking forward to seeing the result.

The price I gave you was an estimate from the factory. The guy I talked to said that doubling or tripling the volume would have minimal effect on the price so if 2000 key caps are made for 10 keyboards at roughly 1800 total usd then that's 180 usd per person (and 200 caps each). That's still pricey, but bearable. If you can get me a cad file that'd be grand.

@psioniclabs - looks like you guys need a project page for this project to keep up with all the interest ;-D

I think you're right. I'll make a point to start a wiki page collection of info on the LVL1 main site sometime next week.

The Wicki-Hayden iPhone apps are mJammer and HexJam.

I finished the first keycap prototype a few minutes ago! I'll post pictures when I get home.

I think you guys are my kind of nut.
However one does wonder why you didn't just buy a pair of Axis-49's @ $430 each? I find they work great.

Anyway, if you want advice on creating the keycaps. give me a boo, and look at my work creating keys a year ago, in www.MusicScienceGuy.com.

You might want to just buy plastic disks - After I made a bunch of Hex ones with a table saw and a miter saw, if found out I could just have ordered round ones, and they would have worked just as well.

Anyway, You are still my kind of geek.

MSG.

Second, once you get the things working, you'll need midi software to reconfigure the boards on whim and provide lots of musical tricks. I've written the starter set of software for this, made it open source, and an looking for guys to help me enhance it.  Please give it a whirl.
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Ken.

Edit: Great work with those caps, but isn't that going to take quite an excessive amount of time to make even 200 of those? Is the attaching part precise enough to fit the cherry switches, btw?

I remain convinced that we should simply make a bulk order from a company that does injection moulding. It shouldn't be too difficult if it is done in a scale large enough to make 10 of these keyboards.

http://www.progressplasticsinc.com/index.htm
http://www.hbmolding.com/index.html

If some kind of shipping can be arranged from the US (200 caps for myself shouldn't be too expensive to get to sweden) then I want to be part of that bulk order.

The attaching part was molded directly from a cherry keycap, so it's a perfect fit. Right now I'm making them one at a time, but the plan is to make another mold that could make multiple at a time.