Hand-cranked Toy Piano
When a battery operated device runs out of juice, most of us reach for a fresh pair of AA’s. But when his daughter’s electronic toy piano had drained its batteries, Dominik instead installed a hand-cranked dynamo to power the instrument ad infinitum. He hacked apart an Ikea flashlight to co-opt its cranked generator and installed it inside his daughter’s plaything. Now a little bit of elbow grease keeps the tunes coming while saving the environment and a little bit of money to boot. Not only that, but he also used the remaining parts from the flashlight to upgrade a vintage bicycle light. It doesn’t get much more resourceful than that, folks! [via Ikea Hacker]

BY Matt Richardson

Matt Richardson is a Brooklyn-based creative technologist, contributing editor for MAKE magazine, and co-author of Getting Started with Raspberry Pi. He's also the owner of Awesome Button Studios, a technology consultancy. Highlights from his work include the Descriptive Camera (a camera which outputs a text description instead of a photo) and The Enough Already (a DIY celebrity-silencing device). Matt's work has been featured at The Nevada Museum of Art, The Rome International Photography Festival, Milan Design Week and has garnered attention from The New York Times, Wired, and New York Magazine.

0 Responses to Hand-cranked Toy Piano Hack Keeps the Tunes Coming Forevermore

  1. Anonymous on said:

    This idea was heavily played on in the movie Pandorum. The ultimate prize would be integrating this into a laptop or more realistically an ipad type device.

  2. Anonymous on said:

    This is a great idea, I was disgusted to find my sons Angry Bird plush toy was designed so you cant change the battery, it took a scalpel and needle and thread to replace: http://www.whatifixedtoday.com/bzl

  3. This is a good idea!  Why don’t they make toys like this?  You’d think it would be a good selling point.

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