[pianotech] PianoDisc Help Needed

[Larry Fisher RPT]

First of all eliminate the Airport Express.  Go with the eighth inch stereo (tip, ring and sleeve) from the speaker output of your iPad and plug it directly into the iQ.  It sounds like you’ve calibrated all the individual solenoids so we know that works.  You can hear the output of the iPad doing it’s data stream thing (sounds like a fax machine with music at times) so you have output from the source.  Set the balance between the speaker and the piano  (this is a function of calibration in the iQ and eliminates a touchy volume control) and be sure you have selected a song with music and piano .... like Hotel California for instance.  

After you get the piano working with out Airport Express, then add the wireless AE and see if you have functions.  The output of the AE is weak and so any people, walls, chairs, Doppler radar or Buicks in the way will reduce it’s effectiveness.  I’ve serviced one in a lobby to a hospital and I noticed when the lobby was a busy place with lots of people milling about, the wireless function was flakey.  At first I suspended the small white box (receiver) so it hung below the rim of the piano.  This helped some.  Then I had the laptop moved from behind the lobby desk to the top of it so there was “line-o-sight” betwixt it and the piano.  This improved things immensely until, like I mentioned earlier, the lobby filled up with sick people farting and puking all over the place.  Hey, it’s a living.  I got paid.

... and while I’m at it, not that it pertains to your tarpickular sitchyation,

One other application was maybe 100 yards from a Doppler Radar antenna.  I had to ground the plate of the piano and locate the iQ inside the ground plane it created plus hold my hand over the iQ box to get the piano to respond.  The entire house was overwhelmingly drenched with RF.  BTW, this ground plane process helped in another application where a local radio station was getting in the iQ and coming out the speakers when at idle.  I ran some grounding braid from the power supply to the plate support post (grand piano).  I think I also had to install a ferrite bead on the data cable.  I dunno anymore  ........  I’ve been paid and it was a while ago.
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