We had a day long photoshoot with Sarah Fisher on Monday.
It was a long day and quite gruelling, but Sarah was an absolute trooper, very easy to work with, and didn’t complain once… 
Hair and makeup by Style Salon in Broad Ripple - Sak’s 5th Avenue provided the clothes and shoes.
Some of you might have noticed that I received unsolicited comments in my YouTube channel regarding the laser harp that’s currently being sold at Sharper Image.
If the over-zealous marketing team had actually approached me first then I might have been more inclined to work with them. But instead they left me with no choice but to delete the comments they had inserted.
If you’ve not seen it, it’s quite… err… interesting…
Of course, denizens of the ‘net community couldn’t let something as unintentionally amusing go without a releasing their own “mix”…
So anyway I thought I’d better go take a look at this thing. So I called in at Sharper Image yesterday to play the light(tm).
Having watched the video a bazillion times I felt fairly well qualified to get something musical out of the device, and after a few minutes of playing I was pleasantly surprised as to how well the software was able to “pick up” on my musical ideas. Some of the songs are better than others - but music is a subjective thing after all, so your mileage may vary.
The construction is plastic and a little on the weak side, I wouldn’t want to do any serious gigging with this thing. But then I suppose it’s not intended to be hauled around constantly in the back of a truck.
At $599 the price point seems a bit high, and some of the people I talked to in SI seemed to agree. $399 is probably a better price, and well within the discretionary income band.
The only problem I can see is that this is not teaching you to play a musical instrument. The Yamaha WX-5 wind controller ($599) for example can teach you the correct finger positions to play a saxophone, flute, or clarinet.
I was told by one of the investors that there will be a music authoring package available for the Beamz - and this I think is going to be essential for the long term appeal of the product.
WFYI is the local PBS station here in Indianapolis.
They ran a story on my laser harp project.
If that’s not an example of how good lighting can make you lose 25lbs then I don’t know what is…
Frets on Fire + GlovePIE + Laser Harp + uncoordinated doofus…
They said “Do FREEBIRD!!!”
…so I did.
I’m sure I can sell Sharper Image on this one…
I made some progress with the Theremin project last night. Hooked up the Arduino, LED and LCD panel. Now I have to write the MIDI handling code…
…and add some high power transistors to switch the bank of LEDs
I missed the first transmission of Across Indiana this week. It was on Monday night with the Laser Harp feature being right at the end.
Apparently it will be shown again on Saturday evening at 6:30pm.
http://www.wfyi.org/acrossIndiana.asp
Episode 1811