IDEO Labs

A couple of weeks ago I happened to get an email from a professor at Shizuoka University named Yoichi Nagashima. Five of his students formed “Revolution-J” where they have created five prepared Jaminators hacked with Arduinos, connected to Max/MSP patches.

Their detailed build log is in Japanese, but you can still get a basic idea of what they have done. Better yet they published all of their schematics and code.

I figured I should re-blog this because not only is it a cool open source project, but the Jaminator was an IDEO designed toy guitar / drum set from 1992. I’d say it basically is the full embodiment of the word “rad” as is confirmed in the press photo after the jump:

Remarkably, I’m sitting next to a new in box Jaminator as I type.  When I got word of this project I sent them a photo of the label of the box and they turned it into this incredible flyer:

Here are some videos that they produced about making the guitars and performing:

Video: Making of “Jami-Girls’ Band”

Video: Jami-Girls Band “Revolution-J”

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Nice work!