Musical instrument capable of diagnosing electronic and mechanical components and diagnostic system used therein
AssigneeYamaha Corporation
InventorsTomoyuki Ura, Yasuhiko Ohba
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An automatic player piano includes an acoustic piano and an electronic system for reenacting a performance on the acoustic piano; a self-diagnosis subroutine program runs on a microprocessor of the electronic system so as to diagnose solenoid-operated actuators with built-in plunger sensors and component parts of the acoustic piano such as keys, pedals, action units and hammers on the basis of pieces of plunger data, pieces of key data and pieces of hammer data; thus, the mechanical components of the piano are diagnosed as well as the electric components through the execution of the self-diagnosis subroutine program.
Claims20
A musical instrument for producing tones, comprising:
- mechanical components, selected ones of which are linked with one another, and responsive to fingering by a player for producing tones;
- electric components associated with selected ones of said mechanical components for participating in the production of said tones;
- and
- a self-diagnostic system connected to said electric components for acquiring pieces of status data representative of current status of selected ones of said electric components and current status of said selected ones of said mechanical components, and examining said pieces of status data to see whether or not said selected ones of said electric components, said selected ones of said mechanical components and other mechanical components related to said selected ones of said mechanical components are functional.
A self-diagnostic system built in a musical instrument including mechanical components for producing tones and electric components associated with selected ones of said mechanical components and participating in the production of said tones, comprising:
- a first diagnostic device for putting selected ones of said electric components to an individual test, and individually analyzing results of said individual test to see whether or not said selected ones of said electric components and said selected ones of said mechanical components are functional;
- and
- a second diagnostic device for obtaining said results of said individual test and results of a cooperation test, and comprehensively analyzing said results of said individual test and said results of said cooperation test to see whether or not other mechanical components linked with said selected ones of said mechanical components are functional.
A method for diagnosing a hybrid musical instrument including an acoustic musical instrument and an electronic system, comprising the steps of:
- a) energizing electric component parts of said electronic system to see whether or not said electric component parts are functional, and
- b) concurrently energizing said electric component parts of said electronic system to see whether or not mechanical component parts of said acoustic musical instrument associated with said electric component parts are functional.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.