jwilzewske: Making an Ergonomic Holder for eReader Tablets for Piano

M y wife gave me a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 Android tablet for my birthday. I use it for lots of things, but one of its best purposes is as a music reader on our piano.

A irTurn’s Bluetooth-based BT-105 is out--it has many nice, new features.

F or the BT-105, I've used an inexpensive Levenger Dovetail bookstand as a cradle, accessorized with a bit of Sugru® silicone to keep the tablet or the cradle from moving around with the vibration from vigorous playing/pedaling. I use that mostly with our MIDI keyboard.

B ut I still like and use my original AT-104 with its proprietary RF communication between the pedal transmitter and the USB dongle receiver. For one thing, there are no long-range Bluetooth interference/security issues with the AT-104.

T he 1280x800 pixel resolution of the 10.1-inch Widescreen HD WXGA TFT on the Galaxy is noticeably better than the 1024x768 resolution of the iPad 2’s 9.7-inch screen. (The screen on the Samsung tab has a 16:9 aspect ratio, compared to 4:3 on the iPad 2. In the landscape orientation, which is how I position the tablet on the piano music stand, the Galaxy display is only 4% more pixels vertically, but it’s got 25% more res than the iPad 2 horizontally.)

S o if I’m going to stick with my AT-104 AirTurn, then I need to get the USB receiver dongle attached to the Galaxy Tab, and the USB port is at middle of the bottom edge of the tablet. (I could rotate the Tab 180-degrees to be upside-down, so the USB port is on top. But then I’d have an unsightly dongle or pigtail cable coming out up there.)

T he Samsung USB adapter dongle is okay, but it sticks out 3cm beyond the edge of the tablet, and a male USB connector terminating a typical cable-end sticks out 5cm beyond that. You need some way to elevate the tablet about 10cm for the short male-to-female USB passthru/extender cable to the AirTurn Dongle to connect to the Samsung USB dongle.

E levating the tablet that much is actually an improvement in terms of good visual ergonomics. But you need to keep the tablet secure and level in that position.

A nd there’s another issue—which is the same as the issue that's affected the usability of laptop-based music eReaders for pianists: the front-to-back depth. It may be too deep for some piano music stands. And it’s definitely too deep for harpsichord or organ music stands. Or the rail on the music stand that is fine for 60 gm of paper sheetmusic is too wimpy for a shiny, slippery tablet that weighs 600 gm. There is a significant risk that the tablet will shimmy its way to a bad fall.

A further issue for me, at least, is the visually small form-factor of the tablet--specifically, the fact that the active display area of the 10.1-inch screen comes so close to the edge of the device—makes me want to have slightly wider “margins” framing the visual field that I’m looking at. With the tablet on the Dovetail bookstand, the “near-far” field at the left-hand and right-hand edge of the displayed music interferes with my eyes’ focus. Maybe that is not an issue for you, but it is for me.

S o I cut a 12x14-inch piece of black 3/16-inch Delrin acetal, put some 1/2-inch Delrin brackets on it with Sugru® to cushion them (see photo). You slide the tablet into the lower brackets and press the top edge in past the pan-head “crowns” of the 3 Sugru® bumpers--each one is about 1 mL of Sugru® that is molded to stand proud of the 5/16-inch hole by about 0.03-inch. The Sugru® is just the right Shore-A/durometer hardness to “give” just a little as the tablet edge moves inward and seats flat against the acetal sheet. The mechanical “detent” of the Sugru® is just enough to hold the tablet securely in place but still allow the tablet to be easily plucked out again with gentle finger force.

M y kluged black acetal stand leaves a nice visual margin all around, similar to the whitespace from the staves to the edges of normal sheetmusic paper, in the same focal plane as the image on the tablet. It makes it easier to read the Tab’s display, and it’s compatible with any piano, organ, harpsichord, etc., including ones that have only a tiny, narrow rail/groove for music to stand up in.

H ugh Sung’s Airturn site has plenty of nice stands and brackets to hold tablets and laptops on various types of mic stands or other uprights. Those are great for string players, wind instruments, singers, and other kinds of musicians. But if you’re a pianist and you’ve done ‘home-brew’ things yourself, to enhance the mounting of your tablet on your piano's music stand, please leave a comment below or email me!

jwilzewske

Thursday, December 15, 2011

Making an Ergonomic Holder for eReader Tablets for Piano

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