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raspberry pi · rust · slint

Pi Piano

A piano you switch on. Under 6 ms from key to sound.

A Raspberry Pi 4 sits between an 88-key controller and an amp. Power it on, and a few seconds later it’s a piano: no desktop, no laptop, nothing to set up.

  • Under 6 ms from key to sound: a real-time audio thread pinned to its own core, straight to the audio interface.
  • Sampled instruments, layered and split across the keyboard, five to ten ready-made setups.
  • A full-screen interface in Slint, drawn directly on the display with no window system. Every knob and fader on the keyboard shows up on screen.
  • It updates itself from prebuilt releases, cross-compiled on a Mac.

It’s built for playing live, not for recording.

Live: patches on the left, every knob and fader of the keyboard on screen. A patch of four instruments, layered and split across the keys. The same screen in its second colour theme. The setup: the 88-key controller, the Pi, and its screen. The Pi sits on the keyboard, next to the audio interface.