Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards DIY replacement for touchscreen (Kawai NV10)

Here's a button-operated version of Kawai's touchscreen interface I made. Should work on CA98/78 and ATX3 as well.

Most of the time, the display remains completely dark. Here, we are changing the Ambience Type setting:


Same state (Ambience Type = Natural), represented on the original UI:


The cheek blocks next to each other. Both are made of black acrylic.

The original UI is an Android device; the new one is built around a Raspberry Pi.


Most selection menus are being mapped to the piano keyboard.


Source code can be found on Github.

This is a commendable job in terms of understanding how the interface works and being able to replace it with a DIY implementation. However I hope you won't get angry if I call your own button implementation hideous

Not sure I'd call it hideous. Certainly no more hideous that the black keys on a piano?

This kind of user interface calls for entering the nuclear launch codes on it.

...in the 1980s.

Black keys of pianos, or keyboard instruments, for that matter, have been like this for at least 200 years, and if you take their form and function maybe for hundreds of years.

But it's not about how the added keys look by themselves. It's how old-fashioned computer keyboard keys with letter on them suit the eternal esthetics of a grand piano. Let alone one rotated at 90 degrees.

Or maybe I misunderstood the purpose of the DIY project. I thought people wanted to remove the screen at all, so that the piano looks like an acoustic piano. Or even if adding physical buttons, those probably should be hidden or as unobtrusive as possible. Putting huge typewriter buttons next to the piano keyboard ruins the entire esthetics IMO, but people have differing tastes. I apologize for the word "hideous", maybe it was too insulting of a design that trebb apparently liked. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as they say.

I think it's amazing that you've gone to this trouble to make your piano interface the way you like it.

That's really impressive engineering, nice job! Did you capture the output from the panel for each setting, and replicate those using the Pi?

If I were to change the panel, I'd want to retain the touchscreen but used a faster SOC, and possibly swap the display layer for an IPS or OLED.

Oh, and while I agree it may not be the most aesthetic design, as a proof of concept that may not be so im portant. I'm sure those old Televideo/Heath keycaps could be replaced with something s bit more contemporary and inconspicuous

I think the keys should be black rather than gray.
Aside from that this is superb.
Imagine ... buttons dedicated to a function, rather than having functions buried beneath layers of menu/sub-menu complexity!
That's called usability. Yay!

I'm in awe. I've built a few simple electronic projects in my life and can't imagine how much went into that. I have such a hard time with touch screens, I assume because my skin is dry. Keys solve that problem.

trebb- that is a fantastic DIY interface. I like the concept, industrial design, and finish.

I find touchscreens from a smartphone to be constant distractions. Your interface would keep me focused on playing and not tempt me to be endlessly tweaking.

Do you have more photos or a video of the build process? If so, they would be fun to see.

I'm in awe too, but with mixed feelings. In fact the touchscreen was, supposedly, an improvement on the small LCD panels most of us have on our pianos: a visual guide to a more or less complex set fo choices. Theoretically it made things easier. But maybe the OP knows for sure he won't be using but just a bunch of the functions, and has made a button for each of them. That could be quicker. But we can't say much until we know how it works.

The best interface is one button/dial/knob/slider per function - Yamaha returned to that with the CP88 - but it's also the most expensive one. OTOH touchscreen LCD is the cheapest way to implement a complex UI.

To my understanding, the OP has found a service manual for a CA78 (visible in the pictures) and according to that manual, every setting can be recreated through a combination of a service command, which in this case is sent by pressing one of the computer keyboard buttons + piano key according to the table. Maybe I am wrong, the OP can shed more light.

Once again, I apologize for my use of the word "hideous", apparently it was too strong a word. I don't like the design but I shouldn't have insulted it.

Don't worry. I will throw some choice words towards your DIY controller in due time!

I will be more than glad if I reach the point where people would insult the appearance of my controller It would mean all else worked!

I was convinced this was a funny joke, but I kept scrolling down and nobody is laughing...

I still think it's hilariously ugly - and kind of absurd. But I like the ingenuity.

Well ... to be fussy, I'd have to say there really is one UI that I like better.
It's the one found on every acoustic piano.
88 keys
3 pedals
Nothing more.

Dude, you are in the wrong forum. There is indeed a forum for you. It's over here!

I hate smudgescreens, so I completely understand this mod. That a user was willing to go to such lengths might have Kawai rethinking the whole smudgescreen, err, touchscreen fiasco.