MAKE @ Parsons

I worked with Jen making our Drawdio circuits (this is a wonderful image of us both). We were focused at the beginning but kind of hopped around the instructions intuitively toward the end, watching others for our next steps, sharing the soldering iron and snipz. We were lucky to have Drawdio experts surrounding us!

There were some confusing moments for us and I would have to agree with everyone else in their feeling about the too-hard-to-push-pin and layout of the instructions. I love MIT Media Lab (& hope to go there in the FUTURE) and so I had actually seen this circuit when checking our their various research groups. It is a fun novelty product and great introduction to circuits but Drawdio has too annoying of a sound to actually make it into anything I would want in my life for any length of time. When we were in class making them I was reminded of the time in grade school music class when everyone got recorders…

I turned mine into a Guitardio which just made the beautiful sounds a guitar not-so-beautiful. The guitar is actually one that I made in a woodshop class during my undergraduate studies. I’m still very proud of it, it was so much work!

I wrapped conductive thread around one of the knobs at the top of the guitar and tied that to one end of the Drawdio. This made every metal part of the guitar conductive as the metal knobs touch the metal strings and so on. The other end was attached to a guitar pick covered in aluminum tape to hold the conductive thread in place. As I played the notes and held the pick, the Drawdio noises started up.

Here is a video of me gettin down with my Guitardio! Yeah!

Turn your speakers down – WARNING: HORRIBLE NOISES.