Network file access to any keyboard

dinther · January 16, 2020, 08:14:29 PM

Hi, I own a PSR s950 still quite happy with it but what I can't stand is the need to continuously sneaker net my USB drive between my keyboard and computer.

I want a smart USB device that can be plugged into my keyboard where it presents itself as a bog standard USB drive, however at the same time this device also has a wifi module which acts as a client on your network just like your laptop. This provides network drive access to the files on the USB drive. Both read and write. either direct from the OS or via a browser interface. No internet connection is required but you do need a wifi router which you most likely already have.

What this means is that you can map smart USB network drive in windows under a drive letter just like C: and drag and drop files to and from your keyboard USB drive as if the USB drive is plugged into the computer.

With a drive like that you can juggle style files, midi files audio files to your hearts content and never again dive behind the keyboard to pull that USB drive out or worse, try to plug it back in.

I researched the market and found several USB storage devices that have wifi build in. However, those act as an wifi access point and only while the device is not plugged in. That renders those things pretty much useless for my needs.

1:
I am curious to hear from users on this forum who have found a solution similar to what I described above for keyboards that don't provide file level access via a local network out of the box.

2:
I have started work on building such a device around a Raspberry Pi Zero W and I would love to hear if anyone else might be interested in such device.

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Patrick · January 17, 2020, 02:32:26 AM

Hi Dinther, if the USB is Wifi, i think you must have Dropbox on your computer and you can add what you want from the computer to the KB; just try it, all the best Patrick

alanclare · January 17, 2020, 02:48:05 AM

I have had a working system which avoids the need to move usb sticks between arranger and laptop in constant use for some months. I described it (not very well) in a post elsewhere in this forum:

https://www.psrtutorial.com/forum/index.php/topic,50523.0.html

I am happy to go into more detail if you wish.

Alan

Patrick · January 17, 2020, 03:26:48 AM

Hi Dinther, an other solution, Patrick

https://fr.yamaha.com/fr/products/musical_instruments/pianos/apps/musicsoft_manager/features.html#product-tabs

Toril S · January 17, 2020, 06:04:03 AM

But Dinthers idea is great!!

DrakeM · January 17, 2020, 07:44:41 AM

Amazing, yes.

Patrick · January 18, 2020, 05:09:04 PM

Hi, Yamaha Microsoft manager works great; just drag and drop all your files on Dropbox and then connect your Ipad to the KB and open Microsoft manager; you can see your USB drive, the User drive, Expansion,... and you can transfert all the files you've checked on the Ipad to the KB or transfert all the files on the KB to the IPad in the folder you want, ... easy and then you can see on your laptop all you files; works great with the Wifi! All the best Patrick

Toril S · January 19, 2020, 04:09:18 PM

But won't it come up as a harddisk if you plug it to your laptop with a USB cable, just like any other removable device? I haven't tried it though.

Fred Smith · January 19, 2020, 04:23:11 PM

Quote from: Toril S on January 19, 2020, 04:09:18 PM
But won't it come up as a harddisk if you plug it to your laptop with a USB cable, just like any other removable device? I haven't tried it though.

It will if you start it in "USB Storage Mode" = Power On + Playlist button

Cheers,
Fred

Toril S · January 19, 2020, 04:28:24 PM

Great! Then you don't have to use Dropbox, just move your files about like on any disk. I wonder, can you edit files too, rename files for instance? I must test out this!

Fred Smith · January 19, 2020, 05:00:32 PM

Quote from: Toril S on January 19, 2020, 04:28:24 PM
Great! Then you don't have to use Dropbox, just move your files about like on any disk. I wonder, can you edit files too, rename files for instance? I must test out this!

Yes. It looks like an external hard drive to the pc.

Cheers,
Fred

Gunnar Jonny · January 19, 2020, 11:19:37 PM

📝
Accessing the User Drive of Genos from the Computer (USB Storage Mode) is also described in the Reference Manual page 162.
Sometimes is worth have a look, just to pick up any notes, or if there is any warnings or good tips to catch .... 😉

Toril S · January 20, 2020, 03:10:11 AM

Thanks Fred and Gunnar Jonny😀

dinther · January 24, 2020, 09:08:36 PM

Quote from: Toril S on January 19, 2020, 04:09:18 PM
But won't it come up as a harddisk if you plug it to your laptop with a USB cable, just like any other removable device? I haven't tried it though.

No it won't. Any storage volume can only be owned by one device at a time. A laptop owns it's storage and as such can not allow that same volume to be made available to the keyboard. Especially not one like mine with a bog standard USB storage driver.

This is why wireless USB storage devices that dynamically switch ownership between the keyboard and external computer need a build in computer to manage this. It is weird that no such device exists commercially but hopefully that will change soon :-)

dinther · January 24, 2020, 09:19:55 PM

Thanks for all the feedback. This is clearly not a new problem and there are some pretty clever solutions but they all require some special steps to make it happen. However, I want a seamless solution that will work on any device anywhere without the need to go through special steps. Possibly I can turn that into a product or at least a detailed "how to"

I have received the hardware to build the drive that I want. This tiny Raspberry Pi Zero Wifi is a brand new board that is really overkill for the solution but a good and easy first step to build the USB drive I want.

By the way, what product designer thought it was a good idea to put the USB plug on the BACK of the keyboard? Currently I use a short USB-A extender cable and glued one end to the edge of the keyboard for easier access. :-)

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alanclare · January 26, 2020, 04:13:35 AM

dinther

I agree with your criticism concerning the silly position of the two usb sockets. But if you're going to bring usb access to the front of the arranger, why not do as I've done and bring it to a hub, providing that you only use a maximum of two of the ports at any one time. I've got a user-friendly setup using a switchable hub with lights to show which usbs are connected.

Alan

dinther · February 07, 2020, 05:32:04 PM

Hey Alan, of course your USB hub is much better then my glued USB cable. But I had it lying around and on a S950 there are no suitable surfaces to place such a hub anyway.

To all: I am happy to report considerable progress with my wifi USB stick which I call "sneaker". At this stage the device is recognized as a bog standard USB drive by my S950 but also my TV and laptop and other computers. At the same time this device can be accessed as a network drive via SMB/CIFS services. Not sure if it supports other operating systems yet. But I plan to also put a web-server into sneaker so you can always use the browser to upload and download files.

There is a whole lot more code required to make sure the two file views sync up but to be honest, I think this was the scary part.

In the picture you can see the Raspberry pi zero w with a hd sd card inserted at the top. Behind it you see the display from my psr-s950 showing the USB tab with the files it recognizes. Also shown is a copy of the Windows 10 file explorer running on my desktop computer where I mapped sneaker" to P drive

More later.

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dinther · February 12, 2020, 06:07:17 PM

Well, I have found many attempts online of people trying to build a network enabled USB drive but every single one of those solutions proved unreliable for various reasons.

Issues such as file size calculations, the fact that a drive volume can only be be owned by one device, character set mis-matches between various operating systems. the list goes on.

But I tackled every single one of them and wrote a script that essentially acts as a traffic light for the various devices that wish to access the storage volume.

Long story short... IT'S ALIVE and it works beautifully and seamless. I will soon make a video to demonstrate how seamless it works but to give you an example:

I can make an audio recording on my PSR-S950 keyboard and then while the USB drive remains plugged in the keyboard, View the USB drive on my phone and playback the audio recording via Bluetooth on my audio system.

The device needs to be user configurable of course. At least ssid and wifi password needs to be configurable somehow and I am also thinking to add FTP and Browser support. Possibly I may need to consider user accounts on more elaborate computer networks but I like to avoid that if I can.

tomtomsf · February 12, 2020, 06:42:20 PM

I hope you might be able to post a step-by-step tutorial on how we can set this up. It sounds pretty awesome!

Tom G.

elad770 · February 12, 2020, 07:46:30 PM

I will contribute $$$ for you to make a tutorial for us! I really need this solution.
I'm going back and forth, copy to the USB plug it in , plug, unplug, plug unplug! It's driving me crazy

dinther, send me paypal info!

dinther · February 12, 2020, 08:10:06 PM

Thanks for the positive feedback guys. Initially I want to see if I can produce a consumer ready version of this device. There is a lot of demand for this. Especially in the 3D printing community. My plan is to build to order on a site like etsy.com Failing that, I will consider writing a step by step tutorial.

I am curious what you think a device like this is worth when it comes ready to plug in with a 28 Gig net storage capacity. Compatible with Windows, Apple, Linux, Chrome OS, Android and IOS. What capacity do you think is the sweet spot?

Jørgen · February 13, 2020, 12:15:07 AM

Hi

My cabled set-up at http://www.jososoft.dk/yamaha/articles/software_9.htm

Well, not wireless...

Jørgen

tomtomsf · February 13, 2020, 07:10:06 PM

I think we can better judge the usefulness once we see it in action. I do hope you are able to create a video demonstartion of your system that shows us exactly how it works. It does sound like a nice time saver.

Tom G.

PS: Hi Jørgen. I had something like your wired version at one time. I disconnected it because my PC is not right next to my Tyros. That meant I alwas has a long USB cable running across the room.

elad770 · February 13, 2020, 11:42:26 PM

I did buy Jorgen set up today but if the wireless will work i will go for it!

Make a video Please!

Jørgen · February 13, 2020, 11:50:31 PM

Quote from: tomtomsf on February 13, 2020, 07:10:06 PM
...
PS: Hi Jørgen. I had something like your wired version at one time. I disconnected it because my PC is not right next to my Tyros. That meant I alwas has a long USB cable running across the room.

Hi Tom. Yes, I sure like a wireless setup too... but in the meantime... 😉
Jørgen

dinther · February 15, 2020, 12:33:45 AM

It's an absolute blast to play with this thing. It behaves really well when there are just a few files moved about but it turns to custard when thousands of files are copied or deleted. So clearly there is some work to be done.

I will take some time after the weekend to make a video and demonstrate how easy it is to use.

Just now I had another thought. I was looking for a certain blues style but can't find it in the many style folders. Maybe more advanced keyboards then my S950 have good search options. With the many music style files I have, it becomes so hard to find what I want...

But as I also have a tablet on my music stand, I am pretty sure that I could write a web-server that also runs on the USB device that could search my music styles library based on style name or beat or via a database even song and have the search results copied into the /styles/result folder ready to be selected on the wifi USB device.

In other words, I could search on my tablet, laptop or phone for "blues" and have the matching styles automatically popup under styles in a folder called "_search blues" (See photo). Same deal for midi files etc.

The sky is the limit really.

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alanclare · February 15, 2020, 03:18:03 AM

I have a copy of all my styles on a usb stick, connected to my laptop. When I want to search for any string of characters, I simply use the very efficient Windows search box to find them all, then select those and copy them into an empty usb for transfer to the Yamaha.

Alan

dinther · February 17, 2020, 11:26:55 PM

Although the little Raspberry board seemed to be the perfect solution. As it is based on Linux I have to content with the way the disk drivers are written for the operating system.

Several times I encountered storage corruption which forced me to re-format the USB drive volume. That is not good enough. My latest code hopefully fixes the issues I was having but time will tell.

Assuming this is not going to work I can limit the write access in one direction only but that is not very useful. I still want to send style or midi files to the USB device via wifi and have my keyboard write to the USB device as well.

If it won't work reliably I will publish the results in detail with a step by step how to and then move on to try to build a solution around an Arduino micro controller and attempt write low level SD card driver code myself. I just think that a device like this is so useful in so many scenarios that I can not understand such device doesn't exist already.

But first let's test my latest code some more for a few days and see if the USB drive get's corrupted again.

dinther · February 18, 2020, 03:29:21 AM

So far so good. I have been smashing my little usb sneaker drive via the network and USB stick and it runs beautifully so far. No corruptions although my file activity monitor does detect USB activity while the drive is idle. Not sure how I can stop this. Maybe the keyboard automatically re-reads the directory. I made recordings on the keyboard then played them back on my PC.

Then grabbed a recording from the sneaker network share, dropped it directly onto my chrome browser and then cast the tab to my Chromecast audio which is connected to my hifi system. It all just works!

Think of the possibilities. With the earlier mentioned search feature via a phone, tablet or computer which already runs in a browser, it will be possible to cast recorded audio directly from the sneaker device to your audio system. Bluetooth is also an option but that will require some soldering.

Maybe I should add a feature that automatically converts wav files into mp3 while I am at it. Mp3 files cast more efficiently over a wifi network as they are 5 to 10 times smaller.