Topic by cpolymeris

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  • cpolymeris
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Topic: Raspberry Pi with controls and screen as Pianoteq Box

Hi,

I've been running Pianoteq on a Raspi for a bit (still amazed that it's even possible!) -- but missed having some physical controls, as my piano, a Korg D1, has no MIDI sliders nor rotary encoders.

So I built myself this pianoteq-in-a-box-with-knobs:

pianoteq in a box

The interface you see has been working for a couple years for me, but it's only this week (and with LLM help) that I finally put the finishing touches on it.

It's written in Rust and FLTK for minimal CPU usage, talks to Pianoteq 8 (not tested with 9!) over JSONRPC and controls ALSA volume directly. The encoders are connected over the I2C bus.

I am not committing to maintaining the code, but thought maybe someone could still find it useful for their own setup, so here it is:

https://github.com/polymeris/uteq

Next goal: make a decent-looking enclosure

Last edited by cpolymeris (16-04-2026 11:18)

Reply by jari_42

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Re: Raspberry Pi with controls and screen as Pianoteq Box

This is fantastic, thanks for sharing! I'm currently using the standalone GUI with the compact interface on a Pi, but it's a bit fiddly on such a small screen, having physical controls is so much nicer.

Reply by TenorBrass

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  • Registered: 22-04-2023
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Re: Raspberry Pi with controls and screen as Pianoteq Box

cpolymeris wrote:

Hi,

I've been running Pianoteq on a Raspi for a bit (still amazed that it's even possible!) -- but missed having some physical controls, as my piano, a Korg D1, has no MIDI sliders nor rotary encoders.

So I built myself this pianoteq-in-a-box-with-knobs:

pianoteq in a box

The interface you see has been working for a couple years for me, but it's only this week (and with LLM help) that I finally put the finishing touches on it.

It's written in Rust and FLTK for minimal CPU usage, talks to Pianoteq 8 (not tested with 9!) over JSONRPC and controls ALSA volume directly. The encoders are connected over the I2C bus.

I am not committing to maintaining the code, but thought maybe someone could still find it useful for their own setup, so here it is:

https://github.com/polymeris/uteq

Next goal: make a decent-looking enclosure

Great project! I very much like the choice of items being controlled and the form-factor.

I'm interested in knowing a couple more things:

1) What OS are you running? Is it the standard Raspberry PI 64-bit? Any optimisations?
2) How do you manage power - in particular shutdown? I would love to know if you have managed true read-only operation for a simple power-down.

I'm building something that also uses the Adafruit 4x encoders. It controls Pianoteq, plus a few more sound engines (bare-metal MiniDexed and a few Wav Trigger Pro's), so using a Teensy 4.1 for the midi IO, logic and 40x2 display. Some months away with the usual challenges of work...

Thanks for sharing your project, it looks very slick.