Revision as of 03:33, 23 March 2011

The Piano Pen

It's a musical microcontroller on wheels. A row of light sensors on the bottom tell the thing when it's rolling over notes, and the speaker burps out the corresponding notes.

It can read a simplified musical notation, and can also be used to read from things like black magnets temporarily applied to a baking sheet for quick composition. These compositions could be scanned or photocopied to share.

The speed at which the Pen is rolled over notes governs tempo.

Questions

• What's the best way to sense light?
  • light sensitive resistors, transistors?
• How big of a clef could it support?
• How big would notes need to be?
• What microcontroller best suited?
  • it needs to be able to generate tones and collect inputs from the light sensors
• Hall effect + magnets for sensing instead of photo?

Ideas

• Dial-a-key
• Transposition
• Recording
• Computer interface