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My parents bought a used Disklavier in the 90s that had mostly just been furniture, since floppy disks went obsolete. A few years ago, my dad found a Bluetooth
by bsimpson 6y ago
My parents bought a used Disklavier in the 90s that had mostly just been furniture, since floppy disks went obsolete.
A few years ago, my dad found a Bluetooth adaptor for it, but the process of streaming songs to it was a convoluted mess that involved downloading MIDIs, putting them in Dropbox, opening them on an iPad in a different app, etc.
I was home for the holidays that week, so I threw together a Chrome extension that streams songs with WebMIDI:
https://github.com/appsforartists/midicast https://github.com/appsforartists/midicast
Super fun project. Far from perfect, but it's neat to programmatically control a musical instrument.
Gave me a chance to try the Cycle architecture too, which works really well for a Chrome extension. Chrome extensions are all about message passing between various contexts. Cycle's reactive model abstracts all that away, so you don't have to think about which piece is running where - you just describe how data gets transformed as it flows through the system.
- dharma1 6y agoThis is great, thanks for making it! I've got a bluetooth midi adaptor with my old Disklavier too - there is an iOS app for streaming midi files into it but it's got a monthly subscription. Your Chrome extension looks perfect.
- jacquesm 6y agoThis whole 'software as a service' thing has really gone too far when things like drivers are being sold on a subscription base.
- necrotic_comp 6y agoNice work ! Your solution is much better, but I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that floppy drive emulators also exist and are currently in use for people who are using old samplers - https://www.amazon.com/SFR1M44-U100K-Floppy-Drive-Emulator-Electronic/dp/B008HYVFIW https://www.amazon.com/SFR1M44-U100K-Floppy-Drive-Emulator-E....
- jacquesm 6y agoNeat project! Disklavier control boxes also have MIDI in, and you can get fairly cheap USB->Midi adapters. That way you can sidestep the bluetooth link if you want to use a computer to drive it.
- bsimpson 6y agoI think the Bluetooth is Yamaha-branded, but it's really just BT -> MIDI. Probably pretty similar to your cable, but wireless. WebMIDI doesn't care, so either adaptor should work with it.