Key Scanning Circuit

The key scanning circuit provides the electronic interface between the key switches and the micro-controller. Digital keyboards have many key switches. At least 88*2 are required for a velocity sensitive standard piano layout, and many experimental designs call for many more. Most microcontrollers have on the order of 10-20 digital I/O pins, so some scanning circuitry is necessary for all but the most trivial keyboards.

An outline for an 88 key design using an Arduino

Multiplexing lots of analog signals into a uC

Useful Parts

Decoders:

  • SN74LS138N is the only DIP 3->8 pin decoder on digikey. Nice old school TTL logic family chip.
  • There are several 4514 family 24-DIP 4-16 decoders available. i.e. CD74HCT4514E, HEF4514BPN

ADC's:

  • You can get ADC's with onboard MUX to effectively provide lots of channels.
  • You can get microcontrollers with built-in ADC's on darn near every pin. (Simpler!)

Analog Mux:

Microcontrollers:
Drew: I'm really happy with the atmel atmega168 that I started using thanks to the excellent work of the arduino project, which is a cheaper and easier to use branch of the Wiring Project. The standard board can be programmed over USB, and it has a cross-platform IDE that really just works, even in OS X!
Update: Developing in C for any of the chips in the AVR family looks reasonably easy. I'm tinkering around with some code in the google group subversion repository.

External Links to Scanning Circuits

Circuit Board Layout and Fabrication

fab houses popular among DIYers:
http://www.4pcb.com/
https://www.mktpcb.com/

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