This is your first step towards these kinds of skills. The boom box is a small sample player you can use to make music, or just random sound. It comes with three prerecorded samples but we probably don’t have the same creative cleverness when it comes to recording as you do so you should definitely record your own samples too!
Category Archives: Projects
Cookie monster
We found out someone is eating the cookies from the jar in the kitchen! We thought about it and came to the conclusion that the best thing to do would be to prepare a trap to find out who was eating them. Let’s build something that will take a picture of whoever opens the cookie jar. No cookie monsters were hurt in the making of this experiment.
Drawdio
Draw audio with drawdio. You might think that this pen is magic, and it might just be. Drawdio turns (almost) everything that is conductive into an instrument. You can either make music by drawing a picture or by touching the tip of it to different conductive things around you. See some examples of ways to use it in this video.
Knock knock box
Knock on this coffin to awake the dead. Don’t worry, the skeleton won’t get out and come after you but it will reply from inside.
Ok, we know that you know that there isn’t a real skeleton there. It’s really a piezo used as a knock sensor. After you’ve made this project you might think of a handy way to use this sensor in other ways. Check out this secret knock detecting lock for some inspiration.
POV
With POV, persistence of vision, you can take eg a bike wheel and make it into a display with just a few LEDs. Check out this video to see what we mean.
In this project you will make one of these displays yourself. Wave it with long strokes or even hold it while running to display a text, a statement or a picture. The effect is most visible in a dark place so if you’re running, make sure not to run in to a tree or a friend.
Sequencer
Binary LP
This sort of works as an LP player. The difference is that instead of using a needle on a plastic disc, we use three IR sensors in a row to read a pattern from a paper disc. If you are both musically and digitally inclined, you will have lots of fun creating melodies with this.