Good luck, @Aleksi! I will be waiting for your feedback about the building proccess 
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I have realized that I had been looking at wrong part list when I made my order. lol I was looking at this. It will take few weeks to gather every missing part because I dont have funds to buy them all right away.
There might be mistakes in schematics like analog sensors connected to digital pins. I dont feel like looking at schematics right now so I am not sure. I will fix them during this weekend. I have made weekend after this weekend my deadline for files to be send to PCB manufacturer so that I will make some progress. It will take while for them to get here anyways.
I did make wiring and test quickly with some ready made code that encoders work with Teensy without any other components. They do. I had some personal stuff so I could not prototype whole rotary encoder part like I said I would.
Also, I tried to get my pi 3 to start but I got some error message. Something about no working init found. I think it was because I used 64GB sd card from my tablet. I tested my other raspberry pi with other sd card. I got it to show Zynthian screen but it turns out that it was raspberry pi 1. 
I was 100% for a while that it was pi 2. I even spent maybe 1 hour making adapter so that I can connect main wiring to it.
I did order new 32GB sd card. It will be here in 2 days.
Impressive posts and very good work! I am really interested in this build.
Well done changing to Kicad! 
How did it go?
Not sure why the forum showed me this thread on my homepage as itās now five years old. Iāve been thinking since long before I actually built one that there ought to be an official design for a version with a keyboard.
Iād like to see one too but thereās such preference and variety youād never please everyone. I think a 13 key fully weighted mini-key action would be best though.
Practical use in real-world situations is what device designers often do not take into consideration.
The design here needs much more care for the details. For now, it is just a box.
The screen should be central and at an angle, so it is well visible. If you put it flat in that box it will be not very practical. Synthesizers need potentiometers. The original UI design has 4 rotaries and 4 buttons, which is ok if you use it remotely with additional controllers or DAW, but in practical use, it is not enough. Of course, it depends also on how someone works with the instruments.
I perform live and also I am a producer, so either live or in a recording situation it is great to be able to get some dynamic modulation going, so the sound of an instrument becomes alive.
A central display is simply more ergonomic, the 4 rotary encoders left and right to the screen makes mainly sense because of the GUI design of the zynthian.
Sustain/Hold function is very important for pads and should be always accessible by a toggle button.
If you make your own keyboard and drum pads then they should live up to the standard and needs of today. I may be not efficient to make own 3D designs and print them for this reason.
Proper keyboard keys are enjoyable to play and it influences the final result. Same for the drum triggers.
I donāt like that flat box design. Againā¦ give it an angle! Lower the front and lift the back. Think about ergonomics and esthetics. Make it pretty and not just a rectangular box.
If you follow these guides the final product will be much better and you will enjoy it much more.
I did a controller design for a Waldorf Pulse, which is a 19-inch thing and very impractical to play with.
Let me show you the design, so you will better understand what I mean by the design aspect.
Under the hood, it has an Arduino Mega, 3 Multiplexers, a Roland MIDI keyboard, about 50 potentiometers and some push buttons, a MIDI merger and one power supply for everything.
The case was made of a 5 Euro kitchen tools drawer from the tool shop and the side and front panels are rosewood.
The Waldorf Pulse also uses a matrix system, which will be additional work for this project in the future.
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Iām more of the ātwo colours of buttons laid out in the usual chromatic pattern is good enoughā thinking, cause the truth is that the capabilities of the beast are far too large to be satisfied with just an octave or two to work with; this is more so that people could pull it out on the bus, put on headphones, and do a little bit of whatever they do with it. This is an 88-key brain weāre wrangling here.
My personal device is going to migrate into a little wooden toy piano I found at a thrift shop, kind of a neat little thing actually, itās got a big tuned fork in it with little wood&paper hammers very crudely actuated by plastic keys. Originally I was gonna figure out some way to wire up the keys, I still think about it, but for one, they are extremely noisy, and also as it turns out, the cavity they occupy is almost perfect for a Korg Nanokey, so eventually thatās gonna go in there.
I was thinking. If I could make a DIY project, and if Iām allowed to have big dreams. I would try to make something like this:
My piano teacher is also an organist. So if I could have the same device to practice Rock Songs with two different sounds for the lower and upper manual. But also the same device could be usefull to practice Organ pieces in Aeolus.
Now is only a dream. Iām starting with an arduino kit to learn the basics. But who knows, maybe in the future.
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My battery powered zynthian rig, is about to appear at this drumming circleā¦
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Looks both chilly and chill.
There are very good tutorials on Youtube. These guys also provide schematics and the code.
Basically, you just need to buy the components and follow the instructions.
The most important is that you know what you really want.
A mono synth, poly synth, a sample player, maybe some midi controller and whatever is out there.
I recommend you look into Teensy. These microcontrollers are much faster and they have some other advantages, like MIDI-compliant device out of the box.
Teensy is the better choice for building a synthesizer.
You can also get audio and MIDI shields for them.
If you just build a controller a Teensy is overkill, but for a synth the faster processor is useful and the on-board 12-bit sound is also not bad and certainly for a mono synth enough. It gives the synth some character.
Check out the Notes and Volts channel on Youtube.
How long does it last?
Thatās a fair description, but the marshmallows are pretty impressive.
Two hours is our normal session. We have one set for the Winter soltice, next week and we are trying to arrange accurate time keeping ( well as accurate as you can make it unsyncād to external references) for acknowledging the hours. The Zynseq is a good precise source for this sort of event.
Ohh, thanks a lot.
Iām just starting with the most noob project that you can imagine, nothing more than turn on a led or move a knob to control a number. But I will need more advanced tutorials some day.
Every project looks near to impossible to me. And I know that my end goal is a little bit to ambitious. I want something that can be used (at the same time) as a pipe organ, drawbar organ and synth. Something with two manuals (61 keys each) and a pedalboard with 32 pedals, where you can play ELPās Tarkus or Bachās fugues.
Some years ago doepfer has projects like this, but now are mostly discontinued. They still have mbp25 board. But the waterfall keyboards and drawbars are discontinued.
Iām trying to be realistic, I have never see a project at this level of complexity. There is organ controllers, they are too expensive to me . But there is a plan B if I canāt do it myself.
Iām making baby steps by now.
I can ensure you, that you are closer to manifesting this than you believe now.
The online community is very helpful. Go in the Arduino forums and you may find others who have the same dream and even manifested it already.
With DIY projects today a big portion of the work is researching what already exists and utilizing it.
You could actually just use the Zynthian and focus on building your own MIDI controllers.
Adding two MIDI keyboards - no problem.
Adding a pedal board - also no problem.
Building a MIDI controller is rather simple.
If you know how to make one with one knob, you can make one with 100 too.
All you need is your custom organ midi controller and you can use the zynthian to generate the sound for you. Or you can just take a laptop with an organ plugin and connect your controller.
Make a list of all potentiometers, drawbars, faders, keys, switches and pedals.
Start by making a plan. Think about the layout and how to build the case for this.
You will need a lot of multiplexers and a microcontroller with lots of inputs. Arduino MEGA might do the job and still Teensy is great for this too.
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something that can be used (at the same time) as a pipe organ, drawbar organ and synth. Something with two manuals (61 keys each) and a pedalboard with 32 pedals
I know this is against the spirit of the forum, and probably against the rules but nobody ever thought to write it down, butā¦ youāre basically describing the Hammond SKx Pro keyboard, with one of the optional pedalboards they sell. Right down to, it includes a monosynth onboard, along with the usual ensemble voices, pianos and organ sounds. I dunno if itās the best out there for any of those things, certainly not the monosynth, but for the price it better be professional level anyways.
I mean, if you specifically to want to build what you described, obviously you donāt want that. But if youāre just looking for something that matches that description to use in your work, Hammondās got you covered. Iām planning to get one myself, soon as I got my money again.
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Thatās just what I need. But at this moment the price is all my savings. I will try the DiY approach, and if I fail, I think I will go for the Hammond SKx Pro.
I think the DiY is expensive too, but at least I can start with a small project and turn it into a bigger one. That way I can buy by parts, itās a little less painfull to my pocket.
Also what I can learn is allways fun, Iām making an Eurorack in paralell, modules as DiY kits are useful to learn too.
What about Ferrofish B4000+ā¦ ? It is 379 Euros at Thomann right now.
Lots of presets and you have your drawbars.
You only need to get then a MIDI keyboard with two rows and the foot pedal.
Here is a solution for a MIDI pedal controller.
Maybe find some person who is fit in electronics to help you to build this.
https://tams-www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/applets/hades/webdemos/72-pic/72-midipedal/midi-organ-pedal.html
And this guy builds an entire organ MIDI controller with Arduino:
https://www.hackster.io/Larason2/midi-for-digital-organs-f3756c
good luck
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Software wise you can use Aeolus and SetBFree to emulate pipe organs and drawbar organs respectively.
Both in Zynthian.
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That looks awesome.
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