members of Dorkbot Edinburgh have done what a lot of of us would do if we had a 19th century pipe organ. They hacked it to be midi controlled. The organ is found above a cafe had by the university of Edinburgh. trainees have been repairing as well as modifying it to get it back in working order.
The electronics are composed of an Xilinx Spartan-3E Starter set as the brains as well as a Microblaze processor converting midi events for the solenoids. The great thing is that none of this needed any type of long-term adjustment to the organ itself. It can all be eliminated to put the organ back in typical playing condition. inspect out the video after the break for some classic Van Halen.
[thanks Jonas]