[sdiy] Electronic organs revisted: using organ manuals and pedals for synth DIY projects, etc

[aankrom]

I've been avoiding projects that use microcontrollers for years. I 
guess they've become so ubiquitous in the DIY sphere that I should 
really get on the ball. I _did_ have plans to build a MIDIBox because I 
have one of the supported LCD displays from an old gigantic HP printer. 
I haven't been to that site in a while. I wonder if there's a keyboard 
scanner project. Do you have a link for the design you used with the PIC 
16F676?


On Sun, 18 Sep 2011 11:19:03 +0100, Tom Wiltshire wrote:
> On 18 Sep 2011, at 02:16, aankrom wrote:
>
>> What I am curious about is anyone else who has done this sort of 
>> thing. The keys and the action on the manuals are actually pretty 
>> good. I'm just not sure which keyboard scanner circuit is the best to 
>> use I'm going to check MFOS and CGS. For the pedal board I'll probably 
>> use Ken Stone's circuit that uses a 74C922: I have a a 74C923 which I 
>> hope is easily adaptable. I also have an old Popular Electronics 
>> magazine from 1979 that shows how to expand key-count of 74C922's 
>> using a few 74LS367's, which I happen to have a ton of. (I just do. 
>> Heck, it's crazy that I just happen to have 2 74C923's just sitting in 
>> my parts bin.) With the 74C923 I should be able to have a 20-note 
>> keyboard. Or maybe I could just not use on of the pins and use it like 
>> a 74C922.
>
> I built a set of MIDI bass pedals using the 13-note set from a
> hideous 1970's transistor Hammond. For that I used a key scanning
> circuit based on a PIC 16F767, which generated the MIDI output too - 
> a
> one-chip solution.
>
> I've got the keyboards too, and was always intending to build a
> programmable monosynth with one of them, but in reality if you've
> designed a programmable monosynth, you might as well add more voice
> boards and build a polysynth (Ahem! Moog! Are you listening?!!).
>
> T.