Arduino Powered InfraHarp

The harp is an ancient stringed musical instrument – the strings of which run at an angle to its soundboard and plucked with fingers. The InfraHarp here is not your stringed musical instrument as the name may lead you to believe rather, it is an Arduino-powered eight-tone arpeggiator that uses Sparkfun’s Musical Instrument Shield. This DIY creates a very effective musical device that can plays A, B, C, D, E, F, G keys in major, minor melodic and harmonic scales, with two octave choices.

The project employs two potentiometers that control the master volume and the tempo of the appegiator. The DIY begins with soldering an infrared emitter/receiver pair. The soldering is minimal and simple – and so is the software coding on Arduino. The program reads the intensity of infrared light received by the detector sensor and triggers a function when the detector’s input is above a pre-decided threshold, say, caused by a blocking hand. After a time lapse (the tempo) the program inspects if the detector’s value is still above the threshold and, if it is, it triggers another function.

Connor Hubeny shelters the whole setup in a plastic case of dimensions 9″ W x 5″ H x 8-1/2″ D. This gives infraharp a synthesizer kind of look. The only tricky part here is ensuring that the wiring is unobtrusively housed by the case.

infraHarp – Prototype from Musik Tech on Vimeo.

infraHarp from Musik Tech on Vimeo.