Skip Russell emailed me to send me this link to his pictures from the Maker Faire - great job, as the lasers are not easy to capture on camera…
http://www.flickr.com/photos/skipr/tags/laserharp/
Looking at the EXIF data, it was 18mm, at 1/5s F3.5 - not sure about the ISO, but I should imagine it was set fairly high. Short exposure time and center-weighted metering help to capture the swirling fog patterns quite nicely…
This is me (looking slightly startled) with Limor Fried - also known as Lady Ada, head honcho of AdaFruit industries. Creator of the Boarduino variant of the Arduino microcontroller, and a whole bunch of other really cool gadgets and gizmos. Check out the SpokePOV - genius!!
…and we got to check out his awesome head tracking demo…
WE NEED GAMES WITH THIS!!
Johnny Chung Lee was at the show… It’s great to meet some of the people you collaborate with on the web…
The Tesla guys (and girls) from UCSC invited me to step into the faraday suit and feel the power of 18 bazillion volts swarming over me…
Now I know how a cyberman feels…
Good Morning America stopped by the booth to film the harp…
Kudos for Pete for having his camera ready…
We just finished two intense days at the San Francisco Maker Faire. Had the harp set up in the Dark Room hall. By the end of the show Pete and I had just about worked out how to run the booth and drum up a crowd.
Most people just loved to look at the harp, rather than play it. I think a few were disappointed that the notes were on a preset scale and not a musical scale - so next time we’ll have to fix that.
There’s another Faire in Texas later in the year, and all being well we’ll be showing at that one too…
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.
