Planet Arduino

Vintage typewriters are truly amazing pieces of technology, but unlike modern keyboards, they are decidedly one-purpose machines. William Sun Petrus, however, had other ideas for his 1920s-era Remington Portable typewriter, augmenting hammers with wires as inputs to an Arduino Mega.

Input signals are produced when each key strikes a metallic “live plate” in the center, completing a circuit. This info is passed along as MIDI signals to a computer running Ableton digital audio software, allowing him to create the excellent beat seen in the video below. 

Typewriter code is available on GitHub, where you’ll certainly notice the lines from Green Eggs and Ham that are output on an LCD screen at the base of the almost 100-year-old device.

While not known for its musical prowess, John Sutley decided to turn an Atari 2600 into a simple four-note drum machine dubbed “SYNDRUM.”

While an interesting exercise in creating a custom cartridge out of repurposed components, pushing buttons to activate four tones and an onscreen VU meter can only keep one’s attention for so long.

To turn this project’s musical entertainment level up to 11, he programmed an Arduino Nano to take MIDI signals and translate them into the equivalent electrical signals that would normally come from a controller. 

The results, as seen in the video below, are spectacular. If you’d like to try something similar yourself, code for the SYNDRUM can be found here.