Before I built a box-stand for my piano I built an overhead light for it. I'd gone to a few open-mike nights where either I had to play in the dark, or get them to switch on more lights. And the piano wasn't in a great spot for lighting at home, either.
A traditional piano light couldn't be used, as they normally sit on top of an upright piano, or just behind the rest on a grand piano, and this plastic piano doesn't have that kind of body. A separate floor stand could be a solution, but I have a carpet with a squishy underlay which doesn't make for stability with tall top-heavy objects. So another home-built gadget was going to be made.
At home I experimented with building a light-bar. Pre-made ones were too short, didn't have any dimensions written in their specs, are probably going to be smaller than their photoshopped pictures, or had outrageous prices of several hundred dollars—some more expensive than the piano. And experimented with finding a good way to suspend it above the keys and the music stand. I used a mike stand in my trials, and while that kind of thing is okay for taking to a gig (or using a spare one already there), I didn't have the space for that in my living room, and didn't want a cluster of freestanding objects to deal with, so I needed to build something much more compact to hold a light in a suitable place. And I also wanted to avoid something that could poke you in the eye if you had to bend down near the keyboard.
The lightbar was easy, just some LED tape inside a square-U-section of aluminium long enough to light several pages of music and the length of the keyboard (I often play 3 or 4 page scores that are unfolded to avoid page turns at awkward moments, most music lights struggle to cover two pages at best). The aluminium strip dissipates the heat, reflects all the light where you want it (down), and shields the glare from the sides getting into your eyes, and from an audience's eyes if you're facing them as you play. I also fitted some cut-up packing foam strips to use as diffusers. And since the lightbar and the piano both run from 12 volts, it is possible to run them from a common power supply. Also, I built a diode-switch box to dim the light by several differing amounts, which has an added bonus of reducing the drain on my battery.
Experiments determined that the light needed to be suspended above the strip of controls on the piano to light up the music and keys, without getting annoying reflections into your eyes off of the white keys. The closer it was to the music, the more reflections off the keys. Closer to you shifts the reflections out of the way, but too close and you'll bang your head on it. High enough that you could turn pages without it getting in the way, but low enough that the metal shields your eyes from seeing the light, and you can look over the top of it if you want to make eye contact with who you're playing with. Or, make it even higher so it's completely above you and out of your sight, but extra distance means less light where you need it, a more cumbersome look to it, and more wobbles as you play. This height seemed a good compromise, and still allowed a mike stand to poke a mike through under it if the pianist needed one, or set up alongside the piano. At the moment I'm using some pre-cut 60 cm aluminium tubes to hold it—they could be a bit shorter, but I'm being cautious as some music books are taller than A4 pages, and you may want to grab the top of a page rather than the side. This height avoids having to awkwardly reach through things in the way.
For a gig, I'm happy to clamp it in a mike stand, allowing all that to be adjusted as needed. But for home, I wanted something more subtle that didn't need a floor stand, nor attaching to the wall. For my organ, it happens to be beside a window where it's convenient to clamp a reading lamp to the curtain pelmet above it. But the piano isn't placed so conveniently. So I opted to make some metal brackets that attached under the piano, where you would screw it to some legs. The piano has some built-in M5 threads for that, but I don't screw my piano into a base, so they're free for me to use to repurpose. I tried some metal strips, but they flexed too much, so they're now in my collection of bits for recycling into other projects, and I went with some aluminium square tubing (same style as the stand I built, though grey/silver aluminium so I can see it in the dark and avoid eye-poking accidents when you bend over near the keyboard).
It had to look neat, it needed to be reasonably solid, and removeable for transport. Either to take with the piano, or be left behind. I settled for making it in three sections, allowing it to be carried without taking up a lot of space: There's a leg at each side of the piano that fastens to the piano and holds the light, the light is slotted in between them, and the cord passes through the tubing with some fabric wadded in with it so it doesn't rattle about while playing.
I tried simply screwing the legs into the piano, but screwing and unscrewing them at a gig turned out to be a pain, so I filed down some of the plastic on the elbow joins to make it possible to slide the upright part of the leg out of the horizontal bit that's screwed under the piano. The horizontal bits stay attached, and they just manage to fit into the soft carry case I got for the piano (another Xtreme product).
I could have attached it to the piano stand, but I mightn't be taking that with me on a gig, or it could make the piano stand too big to transport. I could make a second light bar, but that's spending even more money on a second light for the same piano. In the end, I made a second pair of legs that do attach to the piano stand, but can be slid off. The same light bar can be fitted to either the first set of legs mounted on the piano, or the other set of legs mounted on the box stand.
The next project will be sorting out a wider and taller music stand.