Making music with tech stolen from Predator

This is a second generation Manta, a touch-based controller with visual feedback made to use with Max/MSP. The hexagonal size and the patterns seen in the video after the break remind us of the arm-based computers the Predators sport in the movies. Like the previous generation, this controller can tell not only which of the 48 sensor you’re touching, … Read the rest

Electronic wind chime

The Winduino II uses fins to pick up the movement of the wind and translate it into music. Each fin is attached to the main body using a piezo vibration sensor. The signals are processed by an Arduino housed inside and the resulting data makes its way to a computer via a Bluetooth connection to facilitate the use of … Read the rest

Guitar Hero as an instrument or midi controller

[Robert] wrote a program using Max/MSP that lets him make music with his guitar hero controller. There’s another video after the break where he walks through the various features but here’s the gist of it. This works on Mac and Windows and allows a sort of ‘live play’ or midi mapping mode. In the midi mode each key can … Read the rest

Max/MSP accelerometer beat control

[Ryan] let us know about his Max/MSP Controller. Inside the device is an ADXL 335 accelerometer and 6 push buttons wired to an Arduino. The input data is sent to Max MSP, a sequencer controlling 5 audio tracks, correlating to 5 of the buttons. The 6th button controls delay. What we really liked was how the accelerometer modified the … Read the rest

Smart card emulator

goodcard10

Here’s a quick prototype from [Travis Goodspeed]. It’s a smart card built around an MSP430 microcontroller. We’ve used the MSP430 in the past because of its low power demands. He says this business card currently supports 1.8V to 3.3V, but a future design will have 5V as well. Technologies like Java Card exist for running applets on smart cards, … Read the rest

Maker Faire 2008: Stribe music controller


We saw a lot of interesting gear at Maker Faire last weekend and thought we’d highlight some of those projects this week. [Josh Boughey]‘s Stribe was originally inspired by the monome 40h. It features of 16 columns of 64 LEDs for a total of 1024 individually addressable lights. Even with all those LEDs, PWM control means it can run … Read the rest