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Keyboard made from beer-cans

Cory Doctorow at 4:51 pm Mon, Oct 22, 2012

Here's a cute way to gimmick a keyboard out of a grid of beercans, using Raspberry Pis and Arduinos:

We did this at Webstock, event which took place in Bucharest in September. Staropramen, one of the sponsors of the event asked us for an innovative way to offer a trip to Prague to one of the event's guests.
So, we came up with a keyboard made out of 44 Staropramen beer cans. Each beer can was a key, and whenever someone touched it, the corresponding letter appeared on a large plasma screen (just like any regular computer keyboard).
And the surprise was fantastic! The user experience and engagement overcame any expectation. Every single person who attended Webstock tried the keyboard and participated to the contest.
Behind the scene, the system is built around an Arduino board and a few capacitive controllers (just like the ones which are inside smartphones' touch screens), connected to a Raspberry PI board which controls the plasma screen display.

The Beer Cans Keyboard Movie (via Hacker News)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

TAGS: Arduino booze happy mutants makers raspberry pi romania videos

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danegeld

Neat sponsorship deal. Could we get Glock to sponsor capacitive touch handgun keyboard, or the RIAA to sponsor capacitive keyboard where each key is a legitimate honest-to-god DVD?
http://profiles.google.com/marc.k.mielke Marc Mielke

Raspberry Pi does not pluralize well. This is what I was expecting:
http://www.po-ferries-uk.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/manneken_pis.jpg
Abelard Lindsay

Oh God. That keyboard. Holy fuck. No.
http://www.facebook.com/timmo.warner Timmo Warner

Has everyone emailed manafu yet?
- http://twitter.com/manafu Cristian Manafu
  
  Just 3 guys. Seems Staropramen is not a beer for women.
http://thisisonlya.blogspot.com robcat2075

Disappointed it wasn’t a musical keyboard
Logolepsy

Has anyone emailed necenzurat yet?
silkox

Are the plans open source? Where can we find them?
wakeupsilver

Easier to make with a MaKey MaKey (disclaimer I make MaKey MaKeys)
Al_Packer

Second prize was two trips to Prague.