A harp is a kind of devices that feels unattainable. The place do you even purchase one? Do they promote them at Guitar Heart? Truly, they do. However we reside sooner or later and stringed harps are for Renaissance-era Spaniards anyway. In case you’re extra Electrical Daisy and fewer Ren Faire, then you may construct this compact laser harp and begin plucking.
This instrument has the acquainted harp form and 6 “strings.” Besides there aren’t any bodily strings. The place they might be, there’s simply empty area. However when you wave your hand in that space, you’ll hear a observe and see a crimson laser dot in your hand. The crimson lasers (5mw diodes) are solely there for visible suggestions and the harp senses your hand utilizing Adafruit infrared break beam sensors.
A Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W growth board displays these sensors. When your hand breaks the infrared beam, the board performs the corresponding observe by way of an Adafruit DAC (Digital-to-Analog Converter) and Adafruit amplifier. The Pico 2’s RP2350 microcontroller generates that observe utilizing the synthio library for CircuitPython.
The harp’s physique is an simply assembled stack of laser-cut plywood sheets. It needs to be straightforward for anybody to place collectively and can weigh lots lower than a “actual” harp. As a result of there are not any strings underneath stress, this Laser Harp’s physique doesn’t must be significantly sturdy and is subsequently cheap to construct.
