Alternative Piano Mechanics

The official aim of the project is to work with existing piano actions and parts. Things that would appear in a real acoustic piano. This page is some notes on what might be productive to do if you were to relax that constraint.

Alternative Hammers

The most likely focus, as it requires the least deviation.

Hammer felt serves no particular purpose for our design. At best it makes a nice diffuse surface to bounce IR off of.

Striped hammers

A completely new hammer shape, intended to be impact a solid surface, without sensor. We'd want the hammer to be a chunk of the circumference of the circle it swings through during a strike. The outside surface, furthest from the shank, would be decorated with a precise pattern of alternating black and white lines. Any optical reflectance sensor would be able to watch the passing lines, and measure the velocity of the strike. Ideally there'd be one last transition at the exact moment of impact. More realistically, the lines will be moving by so fast you could trigger the note whenever the "last" one passes and you'd do fine.

Different surface

Instead of making the hammer surface of felt, we'd want to use some other soft but non-deforming surface. We're not hitting strings, so we don't care what the material is so long as it doesn't make any particular noise when impacting the optical sensors.

If the surface is paintable, the diffuse but reflective paint used in this paper might be helpful.