Arduino: A Basic Theremin
Theremins are cool. Fact. You may also have heard of them as either aetherphone/ etherophone or termenvox/ thereminvox. Essentially its an electronic music instrument that plays a certain note depending on the position of your hand and its distance from an antenna.
Building a very basic one with Arduino is easy – easier than my basic drum machine. Very easy. Basically we can replicate one by building a circuit of a speaker and a distance sensor, such as my favourite the SRF05 ultrasound thingy. We calculate the distance and the nearer you get the difference in note/frequency emitted from the speaker.
You’re going to need only a few parts and not much code. You can read more about my applications of the SRF05 along with sample code here. If you can’t be arsed with reading any of that then no worries all is revealed below…
