Patent Grant
8609971
The present invention was not developed with the use of any Federal Funds, but was developed independently by the inventor.
Musical instruments, particularly organs, may comprise large numbers of so-called magnets, usually specially adapted electromagnets. Pipe organs are often fitted with pipe action-magnets, electromagnetic valves that control the admission of air into pipes, usually one magnet per pipe. Pipe organs are also often equipped with stop action-magnets, called SAM's, which are manually or electromagnetically operated switches used to select ranks of organ pipes. Musical instruments comprising no pipes may be fitted with SAM's to select ranks of sounds. U.S. Pat. No. 4,851,800 teaches pipe action-magnets and both tab-style and draw-knob SAM's, all typically used in pipe organs.
Pipe action-magnets are usually addressed and driven by circuitry located on driver cards, each card often servicing thirty-two or sixty-four pipes. Each pipe action-magnet usually has two coil terminals, one often connected in common with other pipe action-magnet terminals, and the other connected to an output of a driver card. A traditional pipe organ rank often comprises sixty-one pipes installed upon a wind chest having dimensions of several feet, with a driver card to service the pipes often located several feet away. If an average distance of ten feet from pipe to card be assumed, six-hundred-ten feet of wire is needed for the individual connections from card to pipes, not including common wiring. Since a pipe organ may comprise several tens of ranks totaling thousands of pipes, the wiring needed is often difficult and costly to install and maintain. U.S. Pat. No. 4,341,145 provides a pipe action-magnet comprising an electronic switch, allowing common connection of wires carrying large currents to pipe magnets and, permitting thinner wires to to control pipe action-magnets. This improvement reduces the wire cost and bulk, but not complexity, of pipe organ action-magnet wiring.
An organ is often fitted with one to three hundred stop action-magnets, or SAM's. Most SAM's comprise two coils, one to turn on a rank of sound, and another to turn it off, both usually addressed and driven by a driver card as with pipe action-magnets. To control ranks of sounds, each SAM additionally comprises one or more switches to which other parts of the musical instrument respond. These switches are usually wired to input cards that detect, and transmit to other parts of the organ, SAM position. Each input card may service perhaps sixty-four SAM switches. Thus, a SAM typically requires approximately thrice the individual, non-common, wiring, and thrice the card circuitry, of a pipe magnet. A theatre pipe-organ known to this inventor comprises about two-hundred-seventy SAM's, requiring a wiring harness, from a bolster upon which the SAM's are mounted to corresponding the driver cards mounted in the organ console, some six feet long and several inches in diameter and containing about eight-hundred wires.
To reduce SAM wiring, the Opus-Two SC Module is offered by Essential Technology of Kanata, Ontario, Canada. Being interposed in data and power wiring paths, such a module incurs added electrical connections.
Power consumption and resultant heat, and stray magnetic fields have hitherto militated against integration of either drive or decoder circuits into SAM's. Thus, a need remains for a musical instrument action-magnets and drivers that include drive and decoder, and signaling circuitry to provide simple, reliable, compact, and economical wiring and logic element reduction for control circuitry of musical instruments such as organs.
In the present invention, musical instrument action magnets drivers and action-magnets are provided that integrate any or all of, drive circuitry, decoder circuitry, and signaling circuitry. Integral drive circuitry, decoder circuitry, or signaling circuitry according to this invention is directed toward reducing the complexity of musical instrument wiring and connections and, in some embodiments, toward logic element reduction. Embodiments of action-magnets and drivers according to the present invention may comprise any of, shift-registers, shift-cells, latch-cells, storage registers, micro-controllers, or combinations thereof, when integrated according to the teachings of this invention. Combined SIPO and PISO cells, registers, or both, may be embodied according to the present invention.
In this teaching, action-magnet means electromagnetic apparatus for controlling a musical instrument, exemplified by pipe action-magnets and stop action-magnets typically comprised by pipe organs. Other musical instrument action-magnets exist, such as those used to operate percussion devices of theatre pipe organs. Action-magnets are typically named according to components they control, for example, pipe action-magnets for controlling organ pipes and stop action-magnets, SAM's, for controlling ranks of organ pipes, often called organ “stops.”
For some embodiments of this invention, this application teaches action-magnets comprising integral drive circuitry, and action-magnets and action-magnet drivers that may also comprise integral decoder circuitry, integral signaling circuitry or both. In this teaching, “integral” drive, decoder, or signaling circuitry, or micro-controller or shift-cell circuitry means:
a. Such circuitry built into an action-magnet, for example, such circuitry sharing an action magnet printed circuit board.
b. Such circuitry coupled, either permanently or by connectors, to an action-magnet or action magnet driver as a rider or “daughter” circuit board, by which the action-magnet or driver is interposed in either the data path, the power connection path, or both, between the drive, decoder, or interface circuitry and the instrument into which the action-magnet or driver is installed.
c. Such circuitry that is both electrically coupled, and mechanically joined to an action-magnet using such fasteners as screws, rivets, adhesives, or mounting rails.
Similarly, an integrated action-magnet or integrated action-magnet driver is defined as an action-magnet or driver comprising, in the manner defined in a.,b., or c. above, circuitry cited above. Integrally comprising likewise means comprising in the manner defined above.
Other terms and concepts used in this teaching are defined as follows:
Action-magnet driver means apparatus comprising drive circuitry, which may additionally comprise other circuitry.
Drive circuitry means circuitry, often comprising an electronic switch, for applying electrical current to energize a coil comprised by an action-magnet.
Coil means an electromagnet coil for converting electrical current to magneto-motive force for operating an action-magnet.
Electronic switch means an active electronic component such as a MOSFET, BJT, IGBT, or thyristor for controlling current flow responsive to a signal.
Instruction an means electrical signal, emanating from controlling components of a musical instrument, to which other components such as action-magnets respond.
Decoder circuitry means apparatus for processing instructions to operate an action-magnet or action-magnet driver, whether that magnet or driver is designed or programmed to decode traditional SAM coil ON and OFF signals, or a digital data with or without imbedded address data. To practice this invention, decoder circuitry may be embodied by discrete hardware or by a processor under program control.
Signaling circuitry means circuitry for electrical communication between musical instrument components, including action magnets.
The use of terms such as “logic 1” and “logic 0” in any part of this description are explanatory and arbitrary, and are not to be understood to limit this invention to a particular data polarity or word-width.
Shift register means a concatenation shift-cells that may comprise integrated circuits or even discrete components. A typical shift-cell is the type-D flip-flop like those of the common 74HC74, or an assemblage of suitably clocked transparent latches. A shift-cell according the present invention may comprise a so-called “bucket-brigade” circuit, or even an assemblage of suitably clocked transmission gates with suitably buffered storage capacitors. A shift-cell or a shift register may even comprise one or more micro-controllers. A shift register serially propagates data, responsive to one or more clock signals, from one or more data inputs, through shift-cells, to one or more data outputs. Though a simple shift register may comprise a simple concatenation of shift-cells between a single data input and a single data output, other forms of shift registers exist that relate to the present invention. In this teaching, a shift-cell is said to address an action-magnet when, through such circuitry as a latch-cell and drive circuitry, the action-magnet is responsive to data having been shifted into the shift-cell. The shift-cell correctly addresses an action-magnet when desired data is usefully aligned therein. A shift register according to this invention may comprise either a distributed or concentrated concatenation of shift-cells. According to this invention, a shift-cell, when used as described below, is decoder circuitry. Although, in the embodiments of the present invention that follow, shift-cells or emulated shift-cells are preferred for addressing action-magnets drivers and action-magnets, the present invention is practiced when integral decoder circuitry as defined above performs address recognition.
A SIPO, Serial-Input-Parallel-Output, register is typified by the common 74HC164. In a SIPO register, a serial data stream is clocked into shift-cells, each of which comprises a parallel output. If its clock is stopped when each data bit resides in a desired shift-cell, each parallel output will desirably represent one bit of the serial data stream. In this teaching such clocking is called a “correct” number of clock pulses. A SIPO register may further comprise latch-cells, often type-D flip-flops, or transparent latches, that may be pulsed after a correct number of clock pulses to store the desired parallel data while clocking of shift-cells continues unabated. Such latch-cells, commonly interposed in the parallel data path to the SIPO outputs, may be seen in the common 74HC595.
A PISO, Parallel-In-Serial-Output, register is typified by the common 74HC165. In this register, parallel data is loaded into shift-cells responsive to a shift/load signal whereby it lies correctly aligned in the register. When the shift/load signal returns to a shift mode, subsequent clock pulses shift data toward a serial output of the PISO register. The first data bit to appear at the serial output is that of the shift-cell connected thereto. When a “correct” number of clock pulses have been asserted the data from the cell furthest from the serial data output emerges. Thus, parallel data is converted to a serial data stream.
Modern electronic practice often predicates integrating a maximum number of logic elements into an integrated circuit or onto a circuit board, a practice vital to wiring reduction in computers, where whole systems may be microscopic. However, as in organs, where large numbers of macroscopic components such as pipes and SAM's must be controlled, such integration can incur wiring problems. Even the integration of eight shift-cells and eight latch-cells seen in the common 74HC595 can yield sub-optimal musical instrument wiring. As will be taught below, two flip-flops, typical in the common 74HC74, yield efficient wiring in integrated pipe action-magnet drivers, and integrated SAM's may be made almost as simply.
Some semiconductor integration solutions can be very useful for solving such problems, as will be shown below. Integrated micro-controllers, exemplified by Microchip Technology PIC ™ products, are so capable and inexpensive that their use to emulate shift-cells, latch-cells, decoders, and other action-magnet circuitry can prove more economical in production than some simple embodiments taught below for clarity.
In the figures that follow, power and common wiring has largely been omitted inasmuch as it occurs to a similar extent in both traditional applications and according to this invention.
Referring first to
Driver card 1010 has a serial data input terminal 1011 and a clock input terminal 1013. Serial data is clocked into a first shift-cell 1020 and shifted through a multiplicity of identical cells, of which four are depicted. If plural such cards are concatenated, data shifts out of a serial output terminal 1012 and into a terminal 1011 of the next driver card in the chain. An input of a first latch-cell 1021, of which four are shown, connects to an output of shift-cell 1020, as subsequent latch-cells connect to subsequent shift-cells. These two cell types thus connected form a SIPO register. When the driver card (or cards) has (have) been clocked as many times as the total number of shift-cells, a “correct” number of clock pulses, the serial data word having been shifted into the SIPO register lies desirably aligned therein. At that time a latch pulse is asserted on latch terminal 1014 to store the now-parallel data in latch-cells 1021. An output of each latch-cell 1021 is connected a drive circuitry 1030 which, responsive to the data stored in the latch cell, turns on or off the coil 1040 of the pipe magnet to which it is connected.
The parallel data from latch-cell 21 drives an electronic switch 30, in this case an N-channel MOSFET, the drive circuitry of action-magnet driver 10. If the data latched indicates that the pipe 60 controlled should speak, switch 30 is closed putting the coil 40 of the pipe magnet, through terminal 17, in circuit with a voltage source 50, typically 12V. Thus the pipe magnet causes air to be admitted to pipe 60 to make it speak. If the parallel data is opposite, switch 30 is turned off and pipe 60 ceases to speak. Terminal 15 is provided for resetting driver 10. A common dual type-D flip-flop, the 74HC74, or equivalent, is suitable for this driver, one half being used as the shift-cell 20, and its other half being used as latch-cell 21. Cells 20 and 21, by receiving data and control signals through terminals 11 and 13-15, by transmitting data through terminal 12, and by switch 30 actuating coil 40 through terminal 17, function as signaling circuitry.
Pipe action-magnet driver 10 and the pipe magnet comprising coil 40 may either be integrated into a single assembly as shown below or separately embodied to practice this invention. Though one might choose to locate driver 10 far from the pipe magnet and the pipe 60 it controls, doing so might waste wire. The design pipe of action-magnet driver 10 facilitates its location close to the pipe 60 that it controls to minimize wiring. Since terminal 12 of one driver 10 feeds terminal 11 of the next, one conductor per pipe action-magnet driver 10, through which the data for many drivers may pass, connects adjacent pipe action-magnet drivers 10.
Switch 161 is operated by rotor 160 to be closed when the mechanical portion of SAM 110 is in an ON, or actuated position, putting in circuit a resistor 162, and a logic supply 151, usually 5V, creating a logic 1 at the junction of switch 161 and resistor 162, at an input D of a transparent latch 122, and at a terminal of multiplexer 126. In like manner, if a mechanical OFF position occurs in the SAM 110, a logic 0 appears on the same node. Since the data latch pulse also appears at an input L of latch 122, the switch data is passed during that pulse to an output Q of latch 122. The data latch pulse is relatively short and when it falls the data in both latches 121 and 122 is stored until the next data latch pulse. If SAM 110 is already in a desired position, the data at the outputs Q of both latches 121 and 122 matches. Gates 124 and 125 process this data and, it being matched, neither gate issues a logic 1. If the data received is a logic 1, but SAM 110 is OFF, gate 124 issues a logic 1, enhancing an NMOSFET 130, which turns ON, pulling down the gate of a PMOSFET 131, turning it ON also. Thus coil 140 is placed in circuit with a power supply 150, usually 12V. In this case current flows from right to left through coil 140 until the next data latch pulse. The time between data latch pulses is preferably about 100 mS, sufficient to assure that SAM 110 will toggle to the desired position. In like manner, if the data is a logic 0 and SAM 110 is in the ON position, gate 125 enhances a MOSFET 132 which enhances MOSFET 133, causing an opposite current in coil 140 to toggle SAM 1100FF. Thus MOSFET's 130 through 133 are comprised by the drive circuitry of SAM 110 of this figure. An ON or OFF pulse endures for the approximately 100 mS period between data latch pulses.
Thus far this description of
As described above, the same shift register comprising concatenated SAM's 110 performs both the SIPO function of traditional driver cards and the PISO function of traditional input cards. This multiple use according the present invention can reduce not only reduces musical instrument wiring, but also logic elements needed. Traditionally, as shown in prior-art
Since it is desirable to minimize delay between a musician's operation of SAM's 110 and an instrument's response, switch data load pulses may be asserted at a higher frequency than data latch pulses, the latter being necessarily of low enough frequency to obtain a desired duration of about 100 mS between pulses, as explained above.
It should be understood that the embodiment of this figure, though proven in practice, is not preferred. This embodiment is included to introduce inventive aspects that might be less evident to some were only the preferred embodiment depicted below taught.
The SAM 110M of this figure has a serial input 111 that functions as does its counterpart in
Additional to the aforementioned functions, and shown in this figure, SAM 110M may be fitted with over-current protection circuitry 190 which may be placed in circuit with MOSFET's 131 and 133, to deliver an over-current signal to micro-controller 200 input 290, whereby micro-controller 200 may responsively cease to enhance MOSFET's 130 and 132. A SAM 110 according to
The latch, LATCH, path of
The aforementioned 100 mS register check performed in the clock path above, and also in the load path discussed below, determines whether the 100 mS has expired and, if it has expired terminates either an “ON” or an “OFF” output exertion of micro-controller 200 of
The load path of
The reset path of
It should be understood that the present invention may be practiced using varied programs and hardware modifications. The simple program described above uses less than 10% of both the program memory and random access memory within an aforementioned PIC 16F505 micro-controller, making it practical to implement, using the same or an equivalent controller, an address recognition routine to facilitate single-wire communications. However, such an embodiment would not be as simple to explain as this teaching. The micro-controller 200 of SAM 110M of this invention can be be programmed to make a SAM 110M responsive to MIDI signals. The hardware of the SAM of
A switch sensor inductor 161P is preferred to provide data responsive to the position of rotor 160, replacing the reed switch of a typical SAM. The switching circuitry and operation of switch sensor inductor 161P is described in detail in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/136,369, which teaches many aspects of the preferred switch of this SAM. A traditional reed switch may also be used to practice this invention.
Coil 140 is driven by MOSFET switches as described above, one of which, 130, is depicted in this figure. Small MOSFET's, typically in well-known SOT23 packages, suffice in the preferred embodiment of this SAM because of its low coil power, initially about one-third of that of two-coil SAM's, and in later prototypes reduced by use of rare-earth magnets and geometry improvements to about one-fifth that of typical SAM's. These MOSFET switches are comprised by the drive circuitry that resides on the circuit board 170 of this SAM. This board also comprises a micro-controller 200. Terminal 111, a serial input terminal, typifies plural terminals of a connector 171 depicted comprising it, and typifies the plural terminals depicted in
The SAM 110M of this figure, when programmed as preferred and shown in
Just as micro-controller 200 of
Routines needed to operate this integral action-magnet may be a subset of those explained for
As with SAM 110M of
It is understood that the invention is not limited to the disclosed embodiments, but on the contrary, is intended to cover various modifications and equivalent arrangements included within the spirit and scope of the appended claims. Without further elaboration, the foregoing will so fully illustrate the invention, that others may by current or future knowledge, readily adapt the same for use under the various conditions of service.
The present application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 61/525,758, filed on Aug. 20, 2011 which is incorporated herein by reference. U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 13/136,369, filed on Jul. 29, 2011 and 13/374,399 filed on Dec. 27, 2011 are incorporated herein by reference.
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| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 20130042743 A1 | Feb 2013 | US |
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 61525758 | Aug 2011 | US |
