Theremin w/Zapper,laser,Arduino

I created this Theremin like device after seeing this article in Make magazine: http://m-cdn.dashdigital.com/make/vol15/?pg=69#pg67

While this looked pretty straight forward it turned out to be a bit much for me at the time.  But after much effort, I got it to work pretty good.

I had trouble getting the laser to aim correctly so I chose to mod a zapper I had available to hold the laser.  This worked well.

So I will recap the steps:

 

Step 1 Video of finished and working

I found software for the Mac that is fun to play with. SimpleSynth has many different instruments or events that the midi stream emulates.
Here I am randomly choosing different styles .

I expect it would work nicely with any other midi player.

Comments

[Ceiling cat]

All the videos are private. Can you fix this?

[duboisvb]

Sorry about that. I changed them

[Ceiling cat]

Thanks!

[flamingo123]

meow... i hail the celing cat

[mr. bond]

i Dont see the point of building this?

[888hilly]

You are mr bond, yet you have mr bean as your profile pic?

[EngineeringShock]

Are you kidding? This is original. I never would have thought to make a theramin using lasers. This is a super cool, and original idea.

[supercapacitor]

Hmm I made one for this contest without a microcontroller.

[mr. bond]

I understand, but when would you use such a thing in real life.

[duboisvb]

Nor I but after seeing it in Make Magazine, as i mention in the instructable, it seemed like an interesting project. As far as the point.. Well perhaps there is no point but that is not a motivation for me to do things. It just seemed cool.

[Reffner]

Why post private videos?

[duboisvb]

Sorry about that. I changed them

[octopuscabbage]

Must. Play. Star trek theme.

[bertus52x11]

Very nice!