Looking over the New York Times article mentioned in 030103 MMDigest:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/02/technology/circuits/02next.html?ex=1042560012&ei=1&en=9650026169577437

I have some thoughts on the questions posed by John Tuttle [030103
MMDigest].  While player pianos have been something that I have been
fascinated with since I first saw one as a child, my professional life
has be centered about electronics, electronics design and computers.
I have been involved with computers one way or another since the
original IBM PC and in electronics for over 20 years.

 [ John Tuttle wrote: ]

> Hi All,  As a dealer of QRS products for over two decades, I am quite
> interested in the new "Self-Tuning" piano. However, a few questions do
> come to mind.
>
> What happens if 'little Johnny' happens to drop one of his metal play
> toys on the strings?

This might very well be a bit of a problem.  To heat a piano string
would take a relatively low voltage (just guessing I'd say something
below 6 volts) but a fair amount of current (amps per string. 10s of
amps on the base strings).  If 'little Johnny' drops his metal toy on
several of the strings, depending on where the toy happens land and the
design of the controlling electronics, you could have a string or two
get red hot and of course break as the system would be thinking that it
is controlling the current for one particular string when in fact more
that one string would be involved.

> What happens if someone spills a drink in the piano?

You get a sticky piano!  (Sorry, just kidding.)  Other that temporally
cooling some of the strings not much else would happen as the
controlling voltages on the string would not be high enough to conduct
through a liquid.  As such there would not be a shock hazard either.

> What happens if 'Puss', the cat, happens to jump inside?

The system heats the strings to 95 degrees (varying this temperature
and a per string basis).  Puss would find the strings uncomfortable but
would not be harmed - although I wouldn't want to the cat to be stuck
in a heated upright for very long!

> These are not uncommon occurrences.
>
> What happens if a string breaks and 'shorts out' a dozen or more other
> strings?

Again, depending on how the electronics are designed, this could be
very bad or not a big deal.  I would hope that QRS would design the
system to simply shut down if a short is detected.

> How "hot" is hot?  And is there a point at which the whole system
> shuts down because of an overload??

95 degrees [Fahrenheit] is warm but not anything that would burn you.
120 degrees is about the temperature of an oven set to very low to keep
dinner warm so 95 degrees is not too bad.  The thing I wonder is if the
piano would need several "auto-tunings" in humid locations as the warm
strings would tend to removed moisture in a piano over a period of
several hours and throw the tuning off.

> Who repairs the system?  A computer technician or a piano tuner?
> Will a piano tuner who works on these pianos have to be cross-trained
> to work on computers?

To be a viable system (to sell in the piano market) the system would have
to be fully automated and not need maintenance from a computer technician.
If something did go wrong with the system likely you would just send a
"black box" back to QRS for repair.

> Can I leave the piano in my home at the shore during the winter when
> the heat gets turned off?  Can I unplug the piano and expect it to
> 'retune' itself once the piano is plugged in again?

Well, the system would heat up to 95 degrees and a stay there.  I don't
think this would really be a problem.  In fact it might even help to
maintain a more constant humidity level in the piano.

As far as re-tuning in the case of a power loss, this would not be a
problem.  The system would "remember" what the tuning was supposed to
be and re-tune accordingly.  Otherwise it would not be a useful system.

> Who is the tuner who will establish the information that goes into
> the tuning chip?  If the system can only be as good as the
> information that goes into the chip, how much better can it be than
> a regular piano that is well maintained?  And what about the customer
> who likes his/her piano tuned a certain way?  When it comes to tuning
> is there really a "one size that fits all"?

This is an easy one.  How ever the piano is turned currently (in tune
or badly out of tune) becomes the "standard" for which the piano stays
in tune when the tuner presses the "remember" button.  So if a customer
likes some odd tuning scale, then the piano will re-tune to that scale.

The only thing that might be a bit odd for the piano tuner is tuning
the piano with all of the strings at 95 degrees as the piano would have
to be tuned "hot" so as to establish a standard for the system to store
in its little memory.

One other thought:  The system might very well take a tremendous amount
of power.  My piano has 44 base strings and 159 non-bass strings.  If I
make some basic assumptions here, each of the bass strings would likely
take about 5 amps on average and each of the non-bass strings would
take about 1 amp on average for a total of 379 amps. Assuming 6 volts
per string that's over 2000 watts!  The average electric room heater
consumes about 1500 watts.  If my assumptions are correct then the
system is going to need 220V power!

With each string generating 95 degrees and with there being over 200
strings in a piano, this system is going to make a lot of heat.   No
need to heat the music room!

> And finally, is all of this exactness really worth the complexity or
> the cost?  Sure, it might be very novel, but there have been lots of
> novel products that did not survive the marketplace.  I sure hope QRS
> isn't wasting their stockholder's money on a "Tucker".

I think for most customers this system wouldn't make sense.  But as
I'm sure you know, there are people out there who just _have_ to have
the best, most accurate, most perfect toys possible, and they also have
the bucks to waste!  <grin>  My 2 cents.

Musically,

Ray Finch
Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA