PHYS 242 Final Project: Electronic Piano

Dahyeon Lee
Our group (Dahyeon Lee and Simon Gilbert) built an electronic piano using
555 Oscillators controlled with an Arduino. The final product has twelve keys, each
representing chromatic tones from A4 (440 Hz) to A5 (880 Hz). The device can play
up to three notes simultaneously.
In this device, sound is produced by voltage controlled oscillators made with
555s. Each oscillator gets a certain input dc voltage and the 555 outputs a square
wave. The square wave is picked up by a speaker, which then produces sound.
In order to produce different levels of dc voltage (which controls the 555), we
used the pulse width modulation function of Arduino. When waves with a certain
pulse width is filtered through a low-pass filter, the result is a constant dc voltage. The
level of this dc voltage can be controlled by using different pulsewidths. When each
key is pressed, the Arduino sends a signal with a certain pulsewidth to a low-pass
filter, which then converts it to dc voltage The 555 receives this dc signal and sends
out a square wave. The resulting output is filtered again through another low-pass
filter to make it free of high frequency jitters. The final signal is picked up by the
speaker.
One of many problems that we encountered while building the piano was that
the 555 produced sound even when it was getting a 0 V input. A 0 V input is supposed
to represent the case when the key is not pressed, and it still produced a wave because
0 V is considered an input. We fixed this problem by adding another element to our
circuit. Transistors were added so that they can open the gate only when the buttons
are pressed. Otherwise, they remain off and no signal passes through.
Another problem that we still have with this circuit is that there are some notes
that sound funny. These notes are in the middle range, and they sound as if the tone is
wobbling. We tried to fix the problem by changing the cutoff frequency of our filters,
but it doesnt seem to do the job.