You know what’s better than gloves? Musical gloves.
Created by Maker Zhang Zhan, the aptly named Music Gloves were initially designed as a final project for NYU Shanghai’s Interaction Lab. However, this idea certainly has potential, and if somehow given wireless capabilities, can be particularly useful for those walking through campus in colder climates, shoveling during wintry weather, or hitting the ski slopes. Inspired by his passion for both wearable technology and music, Zhan has created a controller right on the tip of his finger that enables user to access both music playback features and emit beats of their own.
How it works is relatively simple: By touching your left thumb with any of the four left hand fingers, you can select one of four musical soundtracks. Meanwhile, by touching your right thumb with any of the other four right hand fingers, you can play one percussion sound as a beat to the background music being played.
Zhan had sewn some conductive thread into his pair of winter gloves, which were connnected to different pins on an Atmel based Arduino board. This way, when two fingers would touch each other, the particular circuit was activated and a certain sound piece would play on Processing. The serial communication between Arduino and Processing is facilitated by the Firmata library.
Watch them in action below!