Hi all. You've read about our three projects in our three part series, and I'm sure you've been wondering when we would buckle down and pick one. Well, we've finally done it.
The piano pen has emerged as the clear leader in our work. While it isn't as open ended for educational purposes, it fills what we feel is a really strong need: affordable, accessible music education. In the last week we've put all of our effort into finalizing the software and cleaning up the prototype into something a bit neater. Peter Reintjes put together another version that's a bit smaller, and Jeff Crews has been working on fabricating a nice enclosure for the project. The last step in physical construction of the second prototype will be moving the breadboarded electronics to something soldered, which is on its way. Alan and Ashley Dipert, along with Reintjes, have been working on the software, and have made great strides.
Additionally, we're looking to adding a website for the project--initially to store static lesson plans, suggestions, and how to build the project, but in time we could grow it to something that would allow a community to build around sharing compositions, and teachers sharing ways to incorporate the player into lesson plans. Clearly, win or lose, we intend to continue work on the piano player.
The other two projects still have merit, and we've decided we're going to keep all three as active SplatSpace projects after the challenge, regardless of outcomes. We hope all the hackerspaces have similar plans, as all the ideas we've seen look like valuable
Stay tuned, we'll have more posts about the finished piano player up by Tuesday!