McGuire Piano Player

A web interface for controlling a player piano via midi interface.

Designed to be run from a raspberry pi.

Building a Raspberry Pi image

This is a set of instructions for how the raspberry pi image is built from scratch:

• Download and install arch linux arm : http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv6/raspberry-pi

• Plug ethernet into pi and power on. For debugging purposes, you may wish to use this on a wifi connected laptop that also has an ethernet port: https://gist.github.com/EnigmaCurry/ac5946fa11a761b7b93f

  This will allow the laptop to connect to the pi share internet access to the pi.

• Test ssh works: ssh root@172.19.22.101 (assuming IP address used in the script above, password is 'root')

• Set the locale to en_US.UTF-8. Uncomment en_US.UTF-8 from /etc/locale.gen and run 'locale-gen'.

• run: localectl set-locale LANG=en_US.UTF-8

• Set the hostname:

  hostnamectl set-hostname piano

• The wired connection will work automatically, but you will need to setup the wifi connection on a per-installation basis.

  pacman -S netctl systemctl enable netctl systemctl start netctl

• Create a new file /etc/netctl/wifi, change ESSID and Key:

  Description='A simple WPA encrypted wireless connection' Interface=wlan0 Connection=wireless Security=wpa IP=dhcp ESSID='YOUR ESSID HERE'

  Prepend hexadecimal keys with "

  If your key starts with ", write it as '"""'

  See also: the section on special quoting rules in netctl.profile(5)

  Key='YOUR WPA KEY HERE'

  Uncomment this if your ssid is hidden

  #Hidden=yes

  systemctl start netctl@wifi.service systemctl enable netctl@wifi.service

  Wifi should have started, note the IP for wlan0 with ifconfig.

• Unplug ethernet, reboot, and ensure the wifi came up automatically. TODO: This isn't actually happening, 'netctl wifi start' works after bootup, but not during?

• Update the OS : pacman -Syu

• Create app user:

  useradd piano passwd piano # pw: piano mkdir -p /home/piano chown piano:piano /home/piano gpasswd -a piano audio

Setup app on raspberry pi

• Install system dependencies (as root):

  pacman -S git python python-virtualenv base-devel alsa-lib alsa-utils

• Download and install midish (as root):

  curl http://www.midish.org/midish-1.0.6.tar.gz -o midish-1.0.6.tar.gz tar xfv midish-1.0.6.tar.gz cd midish-1.0.6 ./configure make make install

• Connect midi device, and note which port it's on:

  aconnect -l

  (should be client 20: 'USB-2.0-MIDI')

• Create a new file: /etc/midishrc (replace 20 with the correct port number):

  dnew 0 "20:0" wo dnew 1 "20:1" ro

• Install app (as app user: piano)

  cd ~ git clone git@bitbucket.org:enigmacurry/player_piano.git virtualenv --python=python3.4 player_piano/env source player_piano/env/bin/activate pip install -e player_piano

• Install nginx

  pacman -S nginx polkit

• Start Pyro4 nameserver:

  pyro4-ns &

• TODO: daemonize midi service. For now, start midi service manually:

  python midi.py

• TODO: daemonize flask service

Midi links

Creative Commons:

• http://www.piano-midi.de/

Unknown license:

• http://www.pianola.co.nz/rollscans/zip_download.html
• http://www.trachtman.org/ragtime/ - needs commercial license.
• http://bushgrafts.com/jazz/midi.htm - these are real nice.

Debugging midi output

USB midi device can be seen by:

aconnect -o
client 20: 'USB2.0-MIDI' [type=kernel]
    0 'USB2.0-MIDI MIDI 1'
    1 'USB2.0-MIDI MIDI 2'

20:0 is the output, 20:1 is the input.

Play a midi file to the midi output port:

aplaymidi -p 20:0 test.mid