Piano Box Is A Digital Synthesizer Made Of Paper

March 27, 2012 by Mike Szczys 13 Comments

We love the look of this papercraft piano which [Catarina] built along with some friends at NYC Resistor, a hackerspace in the big apple. It starts off as a cubic black box with a white top. But just lift that top as [Catarina] does in the video after the break and three of the sides fall flat to reveal a pair of speakers and the single-octave keyboard.

The key’s don’t move when you press them. Instead, she decided to use the CapSense Arduino library to implement touch sensitive keys. Each key is made up of a plane of copper foil tape, with a strip of tape running back to the center of the box where it is interfaced with an Arduino Mega hidden there. The Tone library produces the waveforms which are played by the speakers, and a set of LEDs on the upright side of the box illuminate the keyboard diagram as you press each key. You can see that there are short white bars on that display which correspond to the black keys on the keyboard.

If you take a look at the code, you’ll see the libraries really make the code for the project simple.

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[Aaron] Shows Us What Life Would Be Like If [Bob Vila] Started Hacking Headphones

March 27, 2012 by Mike Nathan 19 Comments

construction-headphones

[Aaron Horeth] had a pair of headphones that had seen better days, and before he tossed them out, he realized that he could use them to build a set of custom cans. He had always wanted a pair of headphones with a detachable cord to prevent damage when tripped over, and thought that his old set would be the perfect donor.

He swung by his local hardware store to peruse their collection of construction earmuffs, eventually finding a set that looked decent and didn’t cost an arm and a leg. Using construction earmuffs as the framework for his headphones gave him the durability he was looking for with the added bonus of being designed to deaden extraneous noise. Once he got them home he pulled the drivers from his old set of headphones installing them into the earmuffs, but not before he wired them up to support a breakaway input cable.

There’s no doubt that the modifications are simple, but we imagine they come in pretty handy when tinkering around the shop.

Re-live 1978 In All Its Glory With The [Roth] Scream Box

March 25, 2012 by Mike Nathan 4 Comments

roth-scream-box

We never imagined that [David Lee Roth] would mesh well with an Arduino, that is until Flickr user [tgtsfkncld] showed off his [Roth] Scream Box a few days ago.

The unassuming box resembles sort of a nondescript “Easy Button”, but its payload is far more entertaining than whatever Staples could have possibly recorded for their device. Once the Scream Box is powered on, each press of the button rewards the user with a short sound clip of [Roth] singing the lyrics from [Van Halen’s] “Runnin’ With the Devil”.

[tgtsfkncld] took snippets of the isolated vocal track from the song, playing them back using an Arduino along with an Adafruit Wave Shield. The circuitry behind the device is not overly complicated, though the final result is great. With the wide array of isolated vocals floating around online, it would be very easy to create one for your favorite band/singer as well.

Continue reading to see the [Roth] Scream Box in action.

[via Adafruit Blog]

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Isomorphic Piano Keyboard Is Button Madness

March 19, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 15 Comments

[nikescar] sent in a link to a huge isomorphic MIDI keyboard. We might have missed it the first time around, but that doesn’t diminish such a great looking project.

According to the project page, this humongous keyboard is the work people at Louisville Soundbuilders’ efforts to clone the AXiS-64 MIDI controller. Instead of looking like a ‘normal’ piano keyboard, this isomorphic keyboard puts notes in a hexagonal pattern. This keyboard layout is very useful – fingerings for chords are the same across all keys – but these keyboard layouts are fairly rare and MIDI controllers are expensive as a result.

To make the keyboard in the video velocity sensitive, there are two layers of PCBs. The top layer uses Cherry key switches, while the bottom PCB is an array of tact switches. Measuring the time between the top and bottom key presses gives the on board microcontroller velocity information that is converted to MIDI notes. This setup has a few downsides, namely the huge amount of switches, components, and pins needed for two keyboard matrices.

The project page hasn’t been updated for a few months, so we’re pretty curious about the current status of this build. If any of the Louisville Soundbuilders have an update on this project, send it on in.

Gamelatron, A Fully Robotic Indonesian Gamelan Orchestra.

March 15, 2012 by Jesse Congdon 7 Comments

Last summer we got to have a little chat with [Aaron Taylor] about his automated Gamelan orchestra, Gamelatron. The robotic orchestra features a large collection of Indonesian gongs, metallophones, xylophones and cymbals actuated using simple pull solenoids attached to mallets. Gamelatron’s custom controller activates the various 24V solenoids using MIDI, the whole thing is essentially a gigantic MIDI instrument that can be played by whatever sequencing device you so please.

[Aaron] has a variety of ways to pump MIDI into the controller including the “Padma Bhuwana”, a wooden box with 16 arcade buttons wired to an Arduino. The Arduino can either activate sequences on a computer running Ableton live or the MIDI sequence can be pumped directly out of the Arduino for a computer free interactive installation. [Aaron] also plugs his Akai MPD32 to the computer for live shows or he can just let the laptop do all the work for non-interactive installations.

The really interesting thing about having 170 or so simply actuated instruments is the ability to spread them out and fill every facet of a space. A great example of this was the Temple of Transition at Burning man 2011 where the gongs and what not else would span multiple floors. Here is a recent Wired magazine video published where [Aaron] gives a quick overview of the setup, or if you are too impatient for the ads check out a few videos of Gamelatron in at burning man and PEX summer festival after the jump. We also included [Aaron]’s kickstarter video which has a few more details on the setup (as well as irrelevant stuff about the kickstarter project that has since expired). With all the crazy midi instrument hacks we get around here it is not stretch of the imagination to see this has lots of interactive potential.

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A Simple Touch Interface For Music Player Daemon And More

March 15, 2012 by Mike Nathan 6 Comments

mpd-controller

[Andrew] recently got the authorization to install Linux on his work PC, and he was looking for a way to control his music without relying on keyboard shortcuts to do so. Additionally, he wanted an unmistakable visual cue when he received messages in Pidgin, so he decided to build an external input/notification box.

The control box, quite literally, is a cardboard box in which [Andrew] crammed some components he got way back when from the crew at Seeed Studio. A Seeeduino serves as the brains of his control panel, interfacing with his PC over USB. He uses a set of 4 touch sensors and a potentiometer to control the MPD, allowing him to easily switch tracks, pause his music, control the volume, and lock his computer with a simple touch. A side-mounted RGB LED lights green to show that the system has received his commands successfully, pulsing a bright blue whenever a message arrives via Pidgin.

While the case isn’t exactly pretty, it is small, recycled, and takes up very little desk space. [Andrew] says that it works great, and he has made his code available on github if anyone is interested in using it.

Antique Phone Provides A Soundtrack Perfect For Restoring Old Cars

March 5, 2012 by Mike Nathan 8 Comments

crank-phone-music

[Simon] is in the middle of restoring/building himself an Austin 7 Special out in his garage, and like most tinkerers, found that music helps to move the process along. He happened to have an old Bakelite generator phone out in the garage as well, and figured that he might as well have it do something other than simply hang on the wall.

Playing music from the 1930 seemed like a fitting enough task, so he picked up an Adafruit Waveshield and spent some time wiring it up to the old telephone. His new radio works simply enough, piping .wav files through the handset, provided someone has cranked the phone’s generator recently.

While cranking the generator is required to play music, the Arduino is actually powered off a pair of AA batteries. The cranking is all cosmetic, but he did program the Arduino to slow the music down every once in awhile, requiring that the generator be turned to get things back up to speed.

It really is a neat way to repurpose the old phone, and we like the fact that [Simon] did not gut it to put this project together.

Continue reading to see a short video of his new music player in action.

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