The student organization dLAB featured a set of musical stairs in Drexel University’s Main Building that was available for public interaction until mid-June. Created in honor of Music Hack Day, the project employs infrared emitters (LEDs) and sensors spanning each stair. When the invisible beams are broken as people walk up and down the steps, the sensors trigger synthesized notes from a Raspberry Pi computer. This causes a nearby amplifier to emit notes sequenced to match those on a musical scale. The purpose of the project is to watch how people react to the sounds when interacting by walking up and down the stairs.
This set of musical stairs has been carefully placed in the Main Building since May 18, 2013 where there would not only be the most foot traffic, but also the most diverse body of people, spanning from students of all disciplines to staff and faculty. The project took about 60 hours to create from start to finish and was mainly built by a team of eight members, with the support of additional active members:
George Slavin ’17 Electrical and Computer Engineering
AJ Elliott ’14 Electrical and Computer Engineering
Kenneth Chaney ’17 Electrical and Computer Engineering
Stephen Wolfe ’17 Electrical and Computer Engineering
Casey Hungler ’17 Electrical and Computer Engineering
Elizabeth Plowman ’15 Electrical and Computer Engineering
Patrick Cross ’17 Electrical and Computer Engineering
Rob Surrette ’17 Computer Science
Om Mahida ’17 Electrical and Computer Engineering
Lyric Prince ’14 Science, Technology and Society
It demanded a diverse set of skills including the use of a micro controller, Raspberry Pi computer, basic circuit design, inferred sensors, wiring and the question of how to display the project graphically so that it would attract the most attention. The project so far has received about 300 likes and over 100 reposts on social media with positive feedback overall.
This is dLab’s first public project and was inspired by a similar project that became a YouTube hit by the group, The Fun Theory, an initiative of Volkswagen. The Fun Theory first created a set of musical stairs placed outside of an elevator in Stockholm, Sweden with the purpose of encouraging people to take the stairs instead of the elevator as a fun introduction to a healthy alternative. dLab hopes to have their musical stairs deployed within the community in Philadelphia for others to use as well and is currently working on programming a new musical script by adding song clips to the cue and incorporating different sequencing patterns that will trigger other sounds when interacted with.
The dLAB is the official makerspace, or hackerspace, of the Drexel community. The mission of the organization is to promote student body engagement, enable interdisciplinary collaboration and provide and encourage science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics (STEAM) outreach opportunities through sponsoring group, hands-on technical projects.
“The larger goal is to be a resource for students to feel empowered to develop crazy ideas,” says Elizabeth Plowman, president of the group. The organization provides a physical workspace for and helps fund students driven towards hacking projects. It is open to all students from any discipline. The organization’s mantra is “if you can dream it you can build it.”
dLAB also writes proposals to fund freshman design projects as approved by Dr. Youngmoo Kim, associate professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and director of the Expressive & Creative Interaction Technologies (ExCITe) Center. The group is currently funding two projects and looks forward to expanding on projects that possibly include building an eco-arch on Drexel’s Lancaster Walk and developing an LED wall that lights up when splashed by water as a form of “water graffiti.” All projects by the dLAB are meant for the public to interact with and enjoy.
The idea for this project and more came from brainstorming sessions held every Wednesday from 4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. in Drexel’s ExCITe Center. The group currently has 20 active members, but is always accepting more and is focused on collaborating with all disciplines. For more information of the dLab, please visit their official Facebook page.