Bertha2 is a hardware device that uses linear actuators to play the piano. It's essentially an external player piano. We're able to do this using a microcontroller, 50 linear solenoids, solenoid control boards and a 500W power supply. Here's a video that shows the device in action:
On top of the hardware platform, we've built an integration with Twitch.tv. The idea is that we can livestream the device, and viewers can control what is being played. Viewers submit links to YouTube videos via Twitch chat and the audio from the video is converted to a MIDI file which is then played on the piano.
f"Bertha{n}" is the personal naming scheme for my projects, the first Bertha being a robot I built in high school.
- Ensure the latest firmware is loaded onto the Arduino
- Install Ffmpeg using
brew install ffmpeg - Ensure al dependencies are installed and up to date. Reference
requirements.txtfor more information. - Install the latest version of pytube by using
git clone git://github.com/nficano/pytube.git. Anything else than the latest version will likely cause errors.