Inspiration
We saw the leap motion in the hardware lab and wanted to try it out, so we puzzled for a while to figure out a project. Most of the ideas we had were already pretty well explored, and we weren't interested in designing a lot of graphical interface. Two of our members were inspired by a hacked guitar during the audio hacking workshop, and suggested we hack an instrument
What it does
It plays different smooth blending pitches at differing volumes based off the position of a finger above a leap motion. its essentially a theremin for a quarter of the cost!
How I built it
Challenges I ran into
Getting all the libraries to work together and learning them was a challenge. The first java sound library we used only played sounds with a set duration, and sounded like a really slow oscillator, so we had to search for a library that would allow us to start a sound and then modulate it wherever we needed in the code. We also had difficulty limiting the input range to a compact region, but Leap Motion's interaction box let us normalize our values comfortably.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
What I learned
The basics of leap motion, as well as a few more sound libraries than I'd like to admit. The most challenging aspect was managing our team dynamics. While a lot had to be done, we only had one computer which ran the leap motion well, and we were forced to learn effective version control and communication strategies.
What's next for Leap Motion Theremin
More features and more fun! Multi-finger support is a potential addition, and using gestures to switch between waveforms would be interesting. Hooking this input method up to a synthesizer could let you modulate three different aspects of a sound at once.
