This Piano Does Not Exist

March 12, 2024 by Jenny List 9 Comments

A couple of decades ago one of *the* smartphone accessories to have was a Bluetooth keyboard which projected the keymap onto a table surface where letters could be typed in a virtual space. If we’re honest, we remember them as not being very good. But that hasn’t stopped the idea from resurfacing from time to time.

We’re reminded of it by [Mayuresh1611]’s paper piano, in which a virtual piano keyboard is watched over by a webcam to detect the player’s fingers such that the correct note from a range of MP3 files is delivered.

The README is frustratingly light on details other than setup, but a dive into the requirements reveals OpenCV as expected, and TensorFlow. It seems there’s a training step before a would-be virtual virtuoso can tinkle on the non-existent ivories, but the demo shows that there’s something playable in there. We like the idea, and wonder whether it could also be applied to other instruments such as percussion. A table as a drum kit would surely be just as much fun.

This certainly isn’t the first touch piano we’ve featured, but we think it may be the only one using OpenCV. A previous one used more conventional capacitive sensors.

Ferrules And 3D Prints Revive Classic Microphone

March 8, 2024 by Dan Maloney 3 Comments

Contrary to what our readers may think, we Hackaday writers aren’t exactly hacking layabouts. True, we spend a great deal of time combing through a vast corpus of material to bring you the best from all quadrants of the hacking galaxy, but we do manage to find a few minutes here and there to dip into the shop for a quick hack or two.

Our own [Jenny List] proves that with this quick and easy vintage microphone revival. The mic in question is a Shure Unidyne III, a cardioid pattern dynamic microphone that has been made in the millions since the 1950s. She’s got a couple of these old classics that have been sidelined thanks to their obsolete Amphenol MC3M connectors. The connectors look a little like the now-standard XLR balanced connector, but the pin spacing and pattern are just a touch different.

Luckily, the female sockets in the connector are just the right size to accept one of the crimp-on ferrules [Jenny] had on hand with a snug grip. These were crimped to a length of Cat 5 cable (don’t judge) to complete the wiring, but that left things looking a bit ratty. Some quick OpenSCAD work and a little PLA resulted in a two-piece shell that provides strain relief and protection for the field-expedient connections. It’s not [Roger Daltry] secure, mind you, but as you can see in the video below the break it’s not bad — nothing a few dozen yards of gaffer’s tape couldn’t fix. Come to it, looks like The Who were using the same microphones. Small world.

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Raspinamp: It Really Replicates Questionable Activities Involving Llamas

March 7, 2024 by Bryan Cockfield 23 Comments

In the late 90s as MP3s and various file sharing platforms became more common, most of us were looking for better players than the default media players that came with our operating systems, if they were included at all. To avoid tragedies like Windows Media Center, plenty of us switched to Winamp instead, a much more customizable piece of software that helped pave the way for the digital music revolution of that era. Although there are new, official versions of Winamp currently available, nothing really tops the nostalgia of the original few releases of the software which this project faithfully replicates in handheld form.

The handheld music player uses a standard Raspberry Pi (in this case, a 3B) and a 3.5″ TFT touchscreen display, all enclosed in a clear plastic case. With all of the Pi configuration out of the way, including getting the touchscreen working properly, the software can be set up. It uses QMMP as a media player with a Winamp skin since QMMP works well on Linux systems with limited resources. After getting it installed there’s still some configuration to do to get the Pi to start it at boot and also to fit the player perfectly into the confines of the screen without any of the desktop showing around the edges.

Although it doesn’t use the original Winamp software directly, as that would involve a number of compatibility layers and/or legacy hardware at this point, we still think it’s a faithful recreation of how the original looked and felt on our Windows 98 machines. With a battery and a sizable SD card, this could have been the portable MP3 player many of us never knew we wanted until the iPod came out in the early 00s, and would certainly still work today for those of us not chained to a streaming service. A Raspberry Pi is not the only platform that can replicate the Winamp experience, though. This player does a similar job with the PyPortal instead.

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Thumbs Up To This Pico MIDI Kalimba

March 6, 2024 by Kristina Panos 8 Comments

The kalimba, or thumb piano, is an easy way to make some music even if you have next to no idea what you’re doing. The only real downside is that they are limited to the twinkly sounds of metal tines being plucked by thumbs.

[Jeremy Cook] broke the sonic possibilities wide open by converting a couple of kalimbas into capacitive-touch MIDI instruments using the Raspberry Pi Pico. He started with a small one that is curiously made of solid wood. Usually these instruments are at least partially hollow to allow air to resonate inside the body.

After soldering up all the 1 MΩ resistors necessary to utilize the capacitive touch capabilities of the Pico, [Jeremy] found it a bit difficult to play individual notes on such a small instrument, so he made version two out of a much larger specimen.

This time, [Jeremy] cooked up a custom PCB which he is calling the Pico Touch 2, which adds the necessary resistors at the SMD level for capacitive touch sensing and in turn cleans up the wiring a bit. Be sure to check it out in action after the break.

Okay, so you don’t have an iota of musical talent. You could always build a kalimba that plays itself.

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Bluetooth Wearable Becomes Rad Synth Controller

March 1, 2024 by Lewin Day 1 Comment

Once upon a time, a watch was just a watch. These days, though, smartwatches have all kinds of tricks built in, from heartrate sensors, to accelerometers, gyros, and tons of networking capability. Take advantage of just some of that hardware, and you have yourself a pretty nifty controller. And that’s precisely what [Simon Brem] did.

The project is based around the capable PineTime smartwatch, which [Simon] has been using with the InfiniTime firmware. On this platform, he created an app that sends out Bluetooth MIDI commands straight from the watch. It can be used as a motion controller, where waving and angling the watch can be used to control MIDI parameters, or it can be used to sync BPM to the wearer’s heartrate. [Simon] demonstrates an example use case in a demo video, where the watch is used to control filters in pleasant ways.

We’ve seen a lot of neat watch hacks lately, as it turns out! To say nothing of the brilliant MIDI controllers that have come through these doors, as well. Video after the break.

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A cat sits on a dark green mid-century modern bench next to a cat-sized black piano. A black bowl sits beneath the piano to catch food. An abstract green, blue, and tan picture in a black frame is on the wall above the cat and a black bar stool can be seen around the corner. It looks like the sort of photo you'd see on Instagram or in an interior design magazine.

Piano Feeder Gets Pets Playing For Their Supper

February 29, 2024 by Navarre Bartz 21 Comments

If you ever watched a video of Piano Cat and wondered if your cat could learn to play, then [Sebastian Sokołowski] has a possible solution with this combination piano tutor and cat feeder.

Starting with a CNC cut MDF enclosure, [Sokołowski] developed a cat feeder that would fit in the rear of the piano. It had to be reliable, consistent, and easy to disassemble. He walks us through his testing for each of these features and says the feeder was the most difficult part of the project to develop due to the propensity of pet feeder mechanisms to jam.

A custom PCB takes the key presses from the piano (with functional black keys) and outputs the sound from a speaker in the back. Lessons progress through increasing difficulty automatically, encouraging your cat to learn what the different keys can do. Food is dispensed after a performance or on a schedule set through the accompanying smartphone app. All the files are available if you want to build your own, but there is a wait list available if you want a completed version to give to less technically-inclined cat staff.

We’re certainly no stranger to the creatures that rule the internet here at Hackaday, having featured other cat feeders, new research into spaying cats, or even open source robo-cats.

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Reggaeton-Be-Gone Disconnects Obnoxious Bluetooth Speakers

February 23, 2024 by Bryan Cockfield 29 Comments

If you’re currently living outside of a Spanish-speaking country, it’s possible you’ve only heard of the music genre Reggaeton in passing, if at all. In places with large Spanish populations, though, it would be more surprising if you hadn’t heard it. It’s so popular especially in the Carribean and Latin America that it’s gotten on the nerves of some, most notably [Roni] whose neighbor might not do anything else but listen to this style of music, which can be heard through the walls. To solve the problem [Roni] is now introducing the Reggaeton-Be-Gone. (Google Translate from Spanish)

Inspired by the TV-B-Gone devices which purported to be able to turn off annoying TVs in bars, restaurants, and other places, this device can listen to music being played in the surrounding area and identify whether or not it is hearing Reggaeton. It does this using machine learning, taking samples of the audio it hears and making decisions based on a trained model. When the software, running on a Raspberry Pi, makes a positive identification of one of these songs, it looks for Bluetooth devices in the area and attempts to communicate with them in a number of ways, hopefully rapidly enough to disrupt their intended connections.

In testing with [Roni]’s neighbor, the device seems to show promise although it doesn’t completely disconnect the speaker from its host, instead only interfering with it enough for the neighbor to change locations. Clearly it merits further testing, and possibly other models trained for people who use Bluetooth speakers when skiing, hiking, or working out. Eventually the code will be posted to this GitHub page, but until then it’s not the only way to interfere with your neighbor’s annoying stereo.

Thanks to [BaldPower] and [Alfredo] for the tips!