The Styharp, an instrument modeled after a pig sty

May 28, 2012 By 4 Comments

This is a first for us. We’ve never heard of an instrument modeled after a pig sty before. The Styharp, built by [Yann Seznec], for [Matthew Herbert] is meant to be a mix between performance and visual art. [Matthew]‘s followed a pig from birth to the plate and made an album from the sounds he recorded. The project is called “one pig”. This would explain the reason behind modeling an instrument after a sty.

[Yann] started with a Gametrak controller, basically a reel of line connected to a potentiometer. He ended up using 12 of these, which each have 3 outputs. This gave him plenty of ways change the sound during the performance. You can see a little bit of him demoing it after the break.

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Filed Under: digital audio hacks Tagged With: ,

Two DJ Hero controllers turned into a giant Etch A Sketch

October 30, 2011 By 12 Comments

[Ryan] sent in a little project he’s been working on. After he got his hands on a pair of DJ Hero controllers, he figured he needed to pull controller data off them.

After plugging in his two DJ Hero controllers to a breakout board, [Ryan] discovered the turntables communicate on an I2C bus. A Teensy was thrown into the mix, and work began on decoding the turntable output. [Ryan] figured out that by pulling 23 bytes from the turn table, he was left with the necessary data. Byte 20 is the state of the green, red, and blue buttons, byte 21 is the distance traveled, and byte 23 indicates clockwise or counter-clockwise. After [Ryan] figured out how to pull data off his DJ Hero controllers, the only thing left to do was build a giant Etch A Sketch on a 55 inch TV.

By the time the Etch A Sketch was completed, [Ryan] figured out that he had a gigantic rotary encoder – perfect for some classic MAME action. He started up MAME and loaded up Cameltry and Off The Wall. The DJ Hero controllers seem to work just fine, even if the hunched-over [Ryan] can’t beat the levels.

Filed Under: peripherals hacks Tagged With: , ,

Wireless genesis controller for PC

February 1, 2009 By 13 Comments

wireless_gen

[Jacob] wanted to play some sega games on his PC and felt like the experience just wasn’t complete while using the keyboard for input. He had an old MadCatz controller laying around, which could have probably been connected fairly simply, but he really wanted it to be wireless. A wireless keyboard was sacrificed, and the wireless genesis controller was born. To make it, he disassembled the keyboard to take the controller chip out. After tracing out and soldering switches to the leads, he installed it in his genesis controller.

Filed Under: classic hacks, home entertainment hacks Tagged With: ,