Have you ever wished you could beatbox using real beets? We hadn't either, but Portland-based designer Scott Garner did. "We were asked to build sophisticated technological devices using traditional crafts," he says. So vegetables were an obvious choice because they conduct electrical charge. "Plus, I had a Raspberry Pi and I wanted to do something cool with it," says Garner. "Combining that with my tendency to make noisy inventions, it just happened." Here's how to make your own orchestra.
You'll need a Raspberry Pi, 11 pieces of wire, a SparkFun MPR121 capacitative touch sensor, some small speakers, two 10cm x 20cm pieces of wood, two 30cm x 20cm pieces of wood, two 20cm x 20cm pieces of wood, one 23cm x 23cm piece of wood, a drill, hammer, nails, soldering iron and six large beetroots.
Using a 20cm x 20cm piece of wood as the base, attach the 10cm x 20cm sides and 30cm x 20cm sides. Drill a circle of small holes in the remaining 20cm x 20cm piece - this will be your lid. Cut six equal-sized, evenly dispersed holes in the 23cm x 23cm and affix it to the top of the 30cm x 20cm sides.
Configure the Raspberry Pi to use I2C communication, so that the Pi can speak to devices. Then upload music files of the six instrument sounds you want to use, and set the Pi touch-sensing instructions so it knows when to play each sound. If your coding isn't up to scratch, Garner has the software on his GitHub page to copy.
Connect the beetroots to the touch sensor using six wires. Solder a wire on to pins 0-5 on the board and stick the other end into a vegetable. Connect the sensor to the Pi with the other five wires: the SDA port connects to pin 3 on the computer, the SCL port to pin 5, the 3.3V to pin 1, the IRQ to pin 7 and the grounds of each device to each other.
Plug the speakers into the Pi's audio port, connect the computer to a power source, place all your equipment into the 20cm x 20cm box and close the lid. Put each beet into a different hole in the upper level, making sure that any wires that come loose are pushed back in. Now all that's left to do is drop some beats.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
