It was Hack.Princeton this weekend and [Bonnie] and [Erica] threw together this great interactive portable piano!
The setup is very simple using six LED flashlights, and six photoresistors. An Arduino Uno reads in the values from the photoresistors and parses them to a nearby Raspberry Pi which then creates the sounds. The system even automatically calibrates itself when turned on, adjusting to the ambient light conditions. They made the project for the Hackathon and after a short scare of having to move it to another staircase for the demo, they took home 2nd place in the hardware category!
Stick around after the break to see it in action — this would make a great school project to get kids interested in hacking!
Looking for more piano hacks? How about a Banana Piano? No? What about a pair of gloves with no physical piano? Or maybe one written down on paper with a pencil?
Really really cool, but it’s a lawsuit waiting to happen.
Yep, B, A, G, F, E, D, C, OUCH!
Bag Fed Couch?
I like it :-) I know what would also be fun using an Ultrasonic Sensor changing the pitch by the depth you step like the floor in despicable me 2 ;-)
Or maybe better – how far to the left or right of the step you stand on. Put an ultrasonic ranger at the edge of each step.
Jup that is what I meant :-) effectively dividing each step into blocks with a pitch low to high of the note for that step
Related thing that happened at Hack.Princeton: “Please don’t sleep lying down.” Apparently they hadn’t gotten all the permissions they thought they had. As such, there was no arrangement for sleeping areas and to keep up appearances nobody was allowed to sleep lying down.
Planning++
the university will be quick to shut this down due to fire escape safety.
Thanks all! :) And yeah, the university might not like it too much, but hey…that’s why it’s portable!
The Boston Museum of Science has had one of these for as long as I can remember.
I don’t see it as too much of a liability issue…
You might not, but this is the university that won’t let us put coat hooks or posters on our bedroom doors because we might forget that they’re a “means of egress.” (I’m completely serious.)
That’s the reason they give but that doesn’t mean it’s the real reason. A lot of times university admins will tell staff to tell students to do/not do something but not say why, so staff will take a wild-ass guess at the reason. Other times they just make up a reason pertaining to fire code or something like that, assuming students will be less likely to completely ignore fire code than something like “we’re tired of repairing holes in doors.”
An ultrasonic sensor will not work for a permenant installation. You will need industrial sensors. Please see our piano stairs at http://www.ThePianoStairs.com