Ever since the Wii’s motion-based controls re-established Nintendo as a gaming powerhouse back in 2006, video game designers have been rethinking the way we interact with our systems.
Now, a new hack of Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and an electronic keyboard takes things to an extreme, letting you control the classic fighting video game Tekken by playing the piano. The project is clearly a labor of love, having taken its creator a full semester to assemble.
The piano sends a MIDI signal to an Arduino microcontroller, which, in turn, sends it to the circuit board of an arcade stick. The result is a fighting game controlled by tickling the ivories. And as Boing Boing points out, the creator (who goes only by the name Mc Cool) actually managed to win the round captured for posterity on his Vimeo page.
The TekkenPiano from Mc Cool on Vimeo.
Heyho, This is the final product of my project for interaction design. Took the whole semester, to get this to work but it was worth it. How it works: The piano sends a Midi-Signal, which is transferred to an arduino. According to the signals, the arduino triggers transistors, which then trigger inputs on a paewang PCB (This is the PCB of an arcadestick). The paewang is connected to an Xbox360 (you can also use it on PS3).
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