Check out Onyx Ashanti‘s electrifying demo performance of his new Beatjazz Controller at last night’s TED 2012 Full Spectrum auditions in New York City — he’s on 34:40 – 41:10. Onyx has been designing, building, and programming the Beatjazz Controller for the past several months, and he will be writing about it (and open-sourcing the design) for MAKE vol. 28, coming out in October. I’m so excited about this– thanks, Onyx!

The system is based on an Arduino microcontroller hooked up to a laptop running PD (PureData), with inputs from force sensing resistors (for the keys), accelerometers, and a lip pressure sensor and breath tube sourced from his old Yamaha WX5 wind controller.  Oh, and also plenty of LEDs and hot glue.

Meanwhile, it’s great to see TED producing variety shows!

TED 2012 Full Spectrum auditions – skip to 34:40 for Onyx.