Unlock your inner Mozart with Piano HAT, the ultimate mini musical companion for your Raspberry Pi!
Piano HAT is inspired by Zachary Igielman's PiPiano and made with his blessing. Pimoroni have taken his fabulous idea for a dinky piano add-on for the Raspberry Pi, made it touch-sensitive and added barrels of the trademark Pimoroni polish.
The Piano HAT is, as far as electronics goes, a work of art. It looks slick, feels slick and, with the software library included, acts slick.
- Michael Horne
Use it to play music in Python, control software synths on your Pi, take control of hardware synthesizers, or surprise us with your creativity!
Piano HAT is compatible with Raspberry Pi 2, B+ and A+ and comes fully assembled, with a trove of examples to get you started.
Features:
- 16 touch sensitive buttons
- 13 piano keys (a full octave)
- Octave up/down buttons
- Instrument cycle button (great for use with synthesizers)
- 16 LEDs (let them light automagically, or take control with Python)
16 touch sensitive buttons - Each button on Piano HAT can be individually watched in Python and hooked up to whatever mad-cap contraption or project you can imagine. Tickle-the-ivories and create a symphony of servos or a concerto of... motors.
Octave up/octave down buttons - Expand your playing horizons with two dedicated buttons you can use to shift up or down an octave, or - you know- raise and lower the drawbridge to your fortress.
Instrument Cycle Button - Synth heads will be pleased to hear that it's totally possible to make this button send a patch change event to synths like Yoshimi. All you need is a little Python glue!
16 LEDs - Ever seen on one of those learn-to-play keyboards with light-up keys? Take command of the LEDs and walk yourself through your favorite tunes, or use them as a visual metronome.
Such sounds, very wow - Use with a variety of synths, both hardware and software, play .wav samples with PyGame, or create your own Piano-controlled contraptions. We've included a MIDI example which lets you play music with
Sunvox, Yoshimi and others, plus a PyGame example that includes a few octaves of glorious piano and some drums for good measure.
Hey Pros! - Using Python you can make Piano HAT output regular MIDI commands via a USB to MIDI adapter and take control of your hardware synth gear.
Full Python library, documentation and examples - Head on over to the Piano HAT GitHub repository to find a Python library, examples for PyGame and Python MIDI and more:
https://github.com/pimoroni/piano-hat
As seen in MagPi -
Issue 38 - Make music with the Piano HAT by Richard Hayler,
Issue 37 - Piano HAT review by Les Pounder
