Arduino user named Muiota shared with us an experimental DIY music project running on Arduino Uno and  solenoids.

Take a look at the video to hear how it sounds:

‘Social Vibes’ is a Masters Degree (MSc.) project, in Interactive Media by Cian McLysaght, at the University of Limerick, Ireland. They shared with us their project, running on Arduino Uno, composed by a physical artifact designed and created specifically for an installation adopting the fundamental sound mechanisms used in a vibraphone, know also as a ‘Vibe’:

The instrument consists of twelve musical tones of different pitches. The music created on the instrument is derived from a continuous stream of input via multiple users on Twitter and the explicit interaction from Twitter users, tweeting the instrument directly to the project’s, “@vibe_experiment” Twitter account. Data associated with the emotional status of Twitter users, is mined from the Twitter network via Twitter’s open source, application programming interface (API).

For example if a user tweets “The sun is out, I’m happy”, the code I’ve written will strip out key words and strings associated with the user’s emotional state, within the tweets, ie “I’m happy”, and translate this to a musical notation. Mining Twitter’s API, allows a continuous stream of data. These emotional states are then mapped to specific notes on the physical musical instrument, located in a public space. The tempo of the musical expression will be entirely based upon the speed and volume of the incoming tweets on the Twitter API.

Twitter users who are both followers and non followers of the musical instrument’s Twitter account (@vibe_experiment) can tweet directly to the instrument and this direct interaction will be given precedence, allowing user’s who tweet directly to have their emotional state ‘played’. This allows users to hijack or take over the instrument and experiment with it in a playful manner, but also allows those with musical knowledge the potential to compose simple musical arrangements. When users are not tweeting the instrument directly, then the instrument will revert to mining the Twitter API.

To entice users to interact and observe the action of the instrument there is a live streaming broadcast of the instrument via Twitcam on the Vibe’s Twitter account. This is a live streaming broadcast of the instrument via Twitcam on the @vibe_experiment account. Twitcam, is Twitter’s built in live-streaming platform. This simply requires a webcam and a valid Twitter account.

The instrument constantly tweets back updates to it’s own Twitter account to not only inform people of the general status but also to engage users to interact directly with the ‘Vibe’.

In his blog, Marc from Robot Dialogs presents a very nice hack involving a IBM Selectric II typewriter: by means of an Arduino board and several solenoids, the typewriter can be successfully connected to a computer to emulate a vintage teletype.

The complete story can be found here, together with several videos about its development.

[Via: Hack A Day]

Tasty Tweets is a data visualization experiment that allows users to explore twitter trends through taste with a press of a button. The installation has been developed by Kostantinos Frantzis, Ruben van der Vleuten and Kat Zorina during the Data Visualization course 2012 at Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design,

Using the Twitter APIs, the project collects tweets containing mentions of fruits such as blueberry, pineapple, apple and carrot and creates a smoothie.  The layering of the juices results in a visual representation of the proportions of flavors mentioned – a graph in a glass.

Since twitter trends are changing very quickly, each smoothie has a unique palette of flavors.

The Twitter APIs is used to gather the tweets while Processing is used to analyze and process the data and Arduino controls the flow of liquids into the glass with solenoids.

More info here.

Inspired by a Jeep’s falling water display, Matt Bell created an Arduino-based bubble display, which turns Jeep’s idea on its head. Matt’s latest version makes a few key improvements that help with the bubble size and steadies the speed at which the bubbles rise. For consistent bubble movement, Matt recommends using mineral oil and keeps each “bubble channel” (as I like to call it) in its own vinyl tube. We’re looking forward to seeing the improvements that the next version brings! [via Arduino]

More:

• Bit.fall
• Sequencing Valve Controls Six Streams of Water
• Swinging in the Rain from MAKE Volume 25

From ITP student Justin Lange:

I grew up with my Dad’s songs. Some of my first memories are of him and my Mom singing to me and my siblings. A bad fall last winter left my Dad with a dislocated shoulder and detached nerves. His function in his left arm remains very limited. And he sure can’t play guitar.

I thought,’how about I just build something to allow him to get back to his songs?’ Something of a Luddite at heart, he was a little slow warming up to the idea of an electronic device interfacing between him and an acoustic instrument. Furthermore, he was understandably a bit pessimistic; he said, “Justin, that sounds like a great idea if you’ve got a ten-million dollar research budget behind you, but I just don’t think what you’re talking about is possible”. I said, “let me see what I can do”.

Justin’s device, dubbed the Folkbox, has rows of buttons mounted beneath the neck of the guitar that play chords when depressed. The buttons are hooked up to solenoids that depress the proper strings, allowing the user to play a multitude of different chords.

The interface can be easily rebuilt to allow musicians with other disabilities to play as well. For example, someone who has no use of one hand can have a foot pedal array to play chords.

Justin plans on continuing work with the Folkbox, adding an even larger array of chords it can play, and rebuilding the enclosures in acrylic.