Video of Pianee in action
Code for the machine
My initial sketch for this device was to use an EEG wearable devices similar in principle to the MIND BALL device at the Bakken Museum. A headset would be worn, and through some abstract interpretation of the readings acquired from our brain waves a melody could be produced. Spending many hours attempting to use a arduino connected headset acquired from a Mind Flex toy, I discovered that some cheap childrens toy's are just simply to cheap to provide any kind of functionality. Upon discarding the EEG sensor's I went back to basics, duct tape and servos. Working on the fly I began attaching various percussive elements to my baby piano. Then I needed a behavior that encompassed the mysterious behavior I had envisioned. I therefore coded the jamming piano to play looped sequences whereby the tempo of the sequence, the length of the sequence, the instrumentation, are completely randomized(although Arduino random number generation is not actually random).