pickliano

Pickliano is a once in a lifetime invention that combines the expressive and personal nature of music with the satisfying crunch of pickles.

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Inspiration

We always wanted something that could provide creative freedom and nutrition at the same time but nothing quite hit the mark. Joking aside, we've wanted to try out capacitive touch sensors and this felt like a great time to give them try. Plus, learning about MIDI is nice too.

What it does

The pickliano is 24 pickle slices configured as a piano. When you touch a pickle, it plays a note on the piano!

How we built it

This project was built with an Arduino Uno which is connected to 2 MPR121 capacitive touch sensors. These sensors can detect the difference in capacitance in a pickle when we touch it, which we use an input method. The pickles connected to the Arduino with alligator clips to the MPR121, which transmits the signal.

We also added buttons and dials to add flexibility and expression to the pickliano. There are options to Change the octaves the the pickliano plays at, it has the ability to transpose the keyboard and adjust volume settings.

Once the signal is detected on the microcontroller, we determine which pickle was touched and determine a corresponding MIDI note. This midi note is then transmitted via a serial connection (see challenges), converted to a signal from MIDI virtual device, then fed into a virtual instrument of your choice!

Challenges we ran into

Our first challenge was that we realized that the Arduino boards we had didn't actually support being a MIDI controller. To get around this we found 2 applications to help re-route our MIDI information in a way that a virtual instrument can use. This was done with 'Hairless MIDI <-> Serial bridge' which converted serial data to MIDI data and 'loopMIDI' which creates virtual MIDI controllers.

Another problem we had is that we weren't able to get all of our hardware in time! The MPR121's we had have been in shipping for a while and only arrived at noon on Saturday. To get around this, we had to do some mock ups of our hardware while waited, we also focused on getting the software ready for once it came in.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We were really proud of getting this done in time, especially considering the hardware came in so late.

What we learned

We learned a bit about how MIDI controllers are made. Also, the challenges we faced let us learn a little more about ways that Arduinos can differ.

We also learned about capacitive touch sensors, which was fun. However, the pickle juice made it a bit harder to use!

What's next for pickliano

Mass production and in stores near you.

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