this is the mini moo glove um which i
have developed for um imogen heap and
pimaroni
and it's a children's gesture controlled
midi instrument and basically it makes
really cool bleeps and bloops and when
you program it to when on shake on tilts
on upside downs on 3g on um freefall
they sew it themselves they
wire it themselves they code it
themselves and then they play it
there's a really simple version of a
much more complicated piece of
technology and called the mimu glove
which is
very cool midi instrument that has all
sorts of things in it accelerometers
it's got flex sensors it's got really
it's got its own embedded wireless
network you know it's it's really made
for concert level
um use i was really inspired by that
technology so i've been working with
imogen to create a really stripped down
version of that
um
which essentially just uses an
accelerometer to know where it is it's
based on a micro bit which is
a really cheap little micro controller
used primarily in schools it's
programmable in micro python but you can
also use block code which makes it great
for beginners or people who don't
really get on with text-based coding and
also means that because you can use
block code
you can take it down to probably around
seven and age seven can can do these
fine it's got some little onboard blinky
leds it's got an accelerometer it's got
a magnetometer it's got ble sorry
bluetooth it's got radio which i
absolutely love the radio functionality
is really good it's only got a few
little pins but it does the job it's a
really nice introduction i actually use
this even at university level when i'm
teaching electronics just for a rapid
prototyping exercise because you can get
something up and running on this much
quicker than you can on a more
complicated board like arduino or
any other micro controller of your
choice great little piece of kit really
cheap really sturdy you can throw them
across the room they survive pretty much
like i've abused it i've even washed one
and it's come out all right it's an
amazing child-friendly microcontroller
helen friendly microcontroller
anyway so i based it on this because
it's a really um nice cheap piece of um
kits that you're able to then reuse and
reprogram in your own different ways the
early bits of code just use the
accelerometer functionality but you can
use anything really and it's just i find
it easier to just pick one
input and one output and when you're
first introducing microcontrollers so
the input obviously is the accelerometer
so it knows where it is on these axises
and the output is signed so this is
something that i designed with pimoroni
this is the world's first i think um
sewable speaker
so this is um this is a really cute
little chiptune and i've got one um off
here this is one of the prototypes with
a very nice matte finish
and you can see it's got just power and
grind and crocodile clip and sewing
friendly things and then on the back
flip it over
we got here
it's basically just a little speaker it
works really nicely um and the design's
really cute as well and i got to press
go on the pick and place machine which
was a personal goal i've had
um one kid who made it into a sound
effect glove so you punch forward just
like pew
um i had one kid which was really funny
just run up to me say hey
can it tell if it's in free fall i'm
like yeah yeah i could tell that it's
like like for example if you jumped off
a building i was like yep yep you can
tell that and this little smile spread
across his face and he runs back to his
table
he comes back later drops a glove off of
them off of a table and it starts
playing the funeral march
so this kid has made the most macabre
piece of technology so that's the simple
version
but there's also
um which uh which is very simple it just
does like kind of square wave based
music so very chip tuney very like
old-school kind of sega but you can do
something stuff which is much more
complicated with it so as i said there's
a range of different sensors on board
there's a piece of software called
glover which takes sensor data and
translates it into midi files which will
then talk to garageband or
ableton live which is what i'm using for
my music production so i'm able to not
just control
um
electronic music but i'm then also able
to patch through
to midi instruments for example this
um is triggered by gesture coming from
this so i've got three three stages to
it so i've got my gesture here which is
going into my computer using bluetooth
and it then converts it into a midi file
which is readable by um garageband
ableton live or whatever and i can
trigger external instruments through
that as well so whether that's something
like this or a drum beat
um
or some kind of amazing i can do vocal
loops with it as well that's really
that's a really fun thing to do but
that's a lot more complicated but it but
those are kind of things that you can
actually use in performance um
so you know it's it's it's from the
basic chiptune
um glove and all the way up to
actual music making on stage so
basically i've made a little pitch
this is so on and all we've got is
ground
power and data so i'm just using pin
zero but they can use whatever one they
want and that just corresponds down here
ground 3v and pin 0. the crocodile clip
will be much more elegant than the real
thing let me just pair it up so this is
normally wireless and i'm only using the
usb cable
because i don't have any actual um
batteries
it's what happens halfway through a
festival i think
so this code was actually written by an
11 year old girl
um
and
when i gave her this i just give her
um
one instruction which was to make a bad
ding and then she just ran with it and
she made a call choreography so
basically um it's a taylor swift song so
here we are
and then
she does indeed shake it off
but then i got this other one to do this
as well
your viewers might be a bit more
familiar with that you can control tempo
you can control the notes obviously you
can pre-program them or you can have
them directly respond to where your arm
is in space
you can have different things playing
when you point north people get it
really easily and they just want to have
a go everyone's got a song they want to
make or a sound effect they want to do
and you know i don't need to tell people
what to create with these kind of things
i think they're fairly intuitive so i
just enjoy watching
but speed isn't an issue i know it
bothers a lot of people number one
youtube comment is too slow but you know
people don't understand real physics of
stuff so i was pretty much for shows now
i think i actually wrote a program that
converts midi files into svgs then i can
load the svg into the laser cutter
software