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A project log for 4chord MIDI

4chord MIDI - the USB MIDI keyboard to play every major hit pop song with four little buttons.

sven-gregoriSven Gregori 07/10/2020 at 19:330 Comments

...and that is excellent news, as the good thing in question is the development work for firmware version 2.0, which I am now officially declaring as done and ready! \o/

So after nearly three years of virtually nothing, I am happy to announce that the 4chord MIDI project is finally moving forward, and apart from having implemented every feature that I set as goal a little too long ago, a few additional developments have occurred.

Certified Open Source Hardware

The 4chord MIDI Piano has been officially certified as open source hardware by the Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA) with certification ID FI000001.


Finland Number One!

Tindie - And This Time I Mean It! Almost...

Still not completely there, but the point of no return turning-around-now-would-be-utterly-idiotic has been definitely reached, as is best shown with a picture:

That's the first batch of pianos almost ready, but as you can see, most of them are still missing their display - and that's where I ran into a bit of a problem that will cause some further delays. Again, a picture tells it probably best, so here's the "good to use" pile on the left vs the "crap, those are all scratched / seem to have taken a bath in seawater" pile on the right:

They do seem to work in general, at least most of them, but the thought of mounting a shoddy display like that on this fine looking piano simply sparks no joy. I've decided I'll be further exploring some options here for the time being. In the end, after close to three years, what's a few more weeks, right?

So Firmware Version 2.0 You Say?

Yep. And looking back at the Firmware roadmap log, I'm actually amazed how close to those initial plans the actual firmware version 2.0 ended up to be. Here's me quoting myself of what I had in mind:

All this being said, the plans for the version 2.0 firmware release are:

All of that has happened and is implemented now, and the main deviation from the plan are a few additional features and changes:

So I guess it's time to make some new introduction video to show around all these shiny new features and how to make use of them. Until then, here's another picture showing the updated UI during playback:

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