Air Harp Using The Leap Motion

leap-motion-air-harp

He’s just pointing in this image, but this Air Harp can be played using many fingers as once. It’s a demonstration which [Adam Somers] threw together in one weekend when working with the Leap Motion developer board. We first heard about this slick piece of hardware back in May and from the looks of it this is every bit as amazing as first reported.

Part of what made the project come together so quickly is that [Adam] had already developed a package called muskit. It’s a C++ toolkit for making music applications. It puts the framework in place what we hear in the video after the break. The weekend of hacking makes use of the positional data from the Leap Motion and handles how your digits interact with the virtual strings. You can watch as [Adam] adds more and more strings to the virtual instrument for his finger to interact with. The distance from the screen is what decided is your finger will pluck or not. This is indicated with a red circle when your fingertip is close enough to interact with the phantom string.

Get your hands on the code from his repositories.

6 thoughts on “Air Harp Using The Leap Motion

    1. I didnt see any teardowns, but im guessing fast IR camera (maybe even two?) and an array or IR leds that flash in sequence. You can extract accurate 3d positions using pictures taken with lightning from different perspectives.
      Similar to how those big multitouch tables work with an array of IR lights and IR photoelements scattered in the frame in strategic positions.

  1. Far out, but needs to be put in the form factor of a harp, to see if a harpist can play tune with it. Unless a harpist need the tactile feed pack of the strings. Will be interesting to see how others will use the device. Limited to input that will be seen only on a computer(computer being used is the broadest of meaning) display seems like a waste

  2. Oh yeah. I’ve had my eye on the Leap controller for quite some time too. The tech looks extremely impressive. I’m Hoping they’re coming out soon.
    It’s great to see that it’s being used so effectively so far!

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