Halloween might be over, but for some of us there’s still another pumpkin-centric holiday right around the corner to give us an excuse to build projects out of various gourds. During a challenge at a local event, [Michael] came up with a virtual cornucopia of uses for all of the squashes he had on hand and built a touch-sensitive piano with all of them.

The musical instrument was dubbed the Harpsi-Gourd and makes extensive use of the Arduino touch-sensitive libraries. Beyond that, the project was constructed to be able to fit into a standard sized upright piano. While only 15 pumpkins are currently employed, the instrument can be scaled up to 48 pumpkins. Presumably they would need to be very small for the lid of the piano to still close.

The Harpsi-Gourd is a whimsical re-imagining of the original Makey Makey which can be used to do all kinds of things, including play Mario Bros. There are all kinds of other food-based musical instruments at your disposal as well, though.

If you've ever been to a Maker Faire, you know its as much of an art show as a technology showcase. Builders debut everything from robotic bands to educational circuitry kits at these events, and the NYC Museum of Modern Art is about to immortalize five maker products into its permanent collection. Early next year, the Arduino, Ototo, Makey Makey, Colour Chaser and a DIY Gamer Kit will be on display in the MoMA's design galleries, serving as representatives of the maker culture to the museum's visitors. MoMA is excited about the new additions, but it's not the first time technology has found its way into the museum's collection: in 2011 both Botanicalls and Little Bits found its way into MoMA's galleries. Check out the announcement at the source link below.

[Image credit: NYC MoMA]

Filed under: Misc

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Source: MoMA

[Hasbi Sevinç] is using perishable goods in his electronics project. The orange, tomato, and two apples seen above act as keys for the virtual piano. The concept is the same as the Makey Makey which is often demonstrated as a banana piano. This implementation uses an Arduino to read the sensors and to connect to the computer running the piano program.

You can see there’s a fair amount of circuitry built on the breadboard. Each piece of fruit has its own channel to make it into a touch sensor. The signal produced when your finger contacts the food is amplified by transistors connected in a Darlington pair. That circuit drives the low side of a optoisolator transmitter. The receiving side of it is connected the I/O pin of the Arduino. You can see the schematic as well as a demo clip after the break.

This use of hardware frees up a lot of your microcontroller cycles. That’s because projects like this banana piano use the timers to measure RC decay. [Hasbi's] setup provides a digital signal that at most only needs to be debounced.

Read the full article on MAKE

The litany of exciting Maker Faire products continues with MaKey MaKey, a device that turns anything capable of conducting electricity into a controller. Developed by MIT Media Lab students Jay Silver and Eric Rosenbaum, you simply run a bulldog clip from the board to an object and hold a connecting wire in your hand. Connecting over USB, it's entirely programming-free, but if you find your interest piqued, you can flip the board over to use the Arduino module baked into the hardware. It's already surpassed its original $25,000 Kickstarter goal and when the run begins, you'll be able to pick up everything you need for just $35 -- but if you can't wait that long, head on down to the Bay Area this weekend.

[Thanks, Ryan]

Continue reading MaKey, MaKey turns the whole world into a keyboard

MaKey, MaKey turns the whole world into a keyboard originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 May 2012 01:14:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.