Make: Online : Spinner synth

Spinner synth

Matt Mets made a rotation-based MIDI controller using a motor, disc, webcam, and OpenCV. Source code included.

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Posted by: Kyle McDonald on July 3, 2009 at 7:50 PM

I wonder how long...

...before he realizes you can rotate things in software? :)

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Posted by: Becky Stern on July 3, 2009 at 7:55 PM

He's working for a childrens' museum, so how much less fun would that be?! =]

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Posted by: Kyle McDonald on July 3, 2009 at 11:03 PM

I missed that part -- you're totally right! I can imagine half the fun is trying to get things where you want them, and having that not work :) Maybe magnets would be easier than tape? I'm curious to see what his final synth looks like.

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Posted by: Matt Mets on July 4, 2009 at 8:15 AM

Thanks! Yeah, my actual plan for this is to make a larger wheel out of steel and use brightly colored magnets, but wood is much easier to manufacture for a prototype :-).

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Posted by: Alberto from Nutchip Labs (http://www.nutchip.com) on July 5, 2009 at 4:41 AM

Make the children play - musical merry-go-round

I was about to suggesting to get rid of magnets placing the wheel horizontally, when I suddenly realized how similar it would be to a merry-go-round.
It should fairly easy to place te webcam on top of the carousel and change the software to detect children's positions.
I can't wait to see how chldren react to the thing!

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