Gestural substitution

Design strategy. All activities: Activities.

A Phone as a Gamepad: TouchOSC over Wi-Fi to a Microcontroller That Plays a USB Gamepad

Design a gamepad's controls in TouchOSC on a phone, send them over Wi-Fi as OSC to an ESP32-S3, and let the ESP32-S3 present them to a computer as a USB gamepad: the computer sees a gamepad, and the player plays a layout of their own.

A Phone as a Gamepad over Bluetooth MIDI: TouchOSC to an nRF52840 That Plays a USB Gamepad

The Bluetooth sibling of the Wi-Fi recipe: design a gamepad's controls in TouchOSC on a phone, send them as MIDI over Bluetooth LE to a board built on Nordic's nRF52840, and let the board present them to a computer as a USB gamepad, with no Wi-Fi network in between.

String Synthesizer

Pull strings instead of pressing keys: a row of long-lever microswitches, each worked by its own string.

Replace a Game Controller with Mouse and Keyboard

A keyboard and mouse adapter lets a console take a computer keyboard and mouse in place of its game controller.

Paper FingerPhone

Rebuild the Stylophone in conductive paper: a keyboard you play with your fingers, a paper pressure sensor for vibrato, one microcontroller, and a pizza box as the sounding board.

Tethered Theremin

Play a theremin with Gametrak tethers: one hand's position sets the pitch, the other's pull the volume.

Tea-Chest Bass

Pin a Gametrak tether along an angled pole to make a plucked, stopped string, like a tea-chest or washtub bass.

Round Slide Harp

A round, upright harp of Gametrak tethers bound by a movable ring, for groups of players from young children to skilled musicians.