Creating musical instruments with an Arduino has never been difficult, however the resulting sound quality hasn't been the best due to the limited processing power and storage space in the microcontroller. However with the use of an inexpensive MP3 file playback shield these limits are broken and you can playback some excellent sounds.
With this in mind the folks at the Musik Tech hackerspace have developed their "infraHarp" - an detailed instrument which plays in the keys of A, B, C, D, E, F, G in major, minor melodic and harmonic scales, with two octave choices. The name is also a nod to the main interface, which uses eight infra-red beams which are used as keys, as you can see in the video below:
And with the final enclosure, the infraHarp can be used in almost any situation. For complete details and more to make your own, visit the project website. And for more, we're on facebook, Google+, and twitter - so follow us for news and product updates as well.
If you're enjoying working with Arduino projects but find the Uno-sized boards somewhat constricting - it's time to move up to the Freetronics EtherMega:
Quite simple the EtherMega is the fully-loaded Arduino-compatible board on the market today. Apart from being completely Arduino Mega2560-compatible, it includes full Ethernet interface, a microSD card socket, full USB interface, optional Power-over-Ethernet support and still has a circuit prototyping area with extra I2C interface pins. So if your project is breaking the limits, upgrade to the EtherMega today.
