An Umbrella that plays music when it rains

Sounds like straight from the story tales, isn’t it? But its real.

Two Berlin-based hackers Alice Zappe and Julia Lager created a “musical umbrella”, one that creates a random series of lo-fi 8-bit tones that sounds like music (well, not the kind of melody you’re looking for) when it rains on it.

How does this umbrella work?

Well, it’s simple. When raindrops strike the outside surface of the umbrella, they are converted to tones by the the presence of twelve piezo pickup sensors which are taped to the underside of the umbrella and respond to vibration. The piezo’s are then fed into an Arduino Uno – an inexpensive and open source micro-controller popular with hackers and hobbyists, which is in turn connected to two speakers.

So next time you go out in the rain, and hear your umbrella making the sounds (or music as you might want to call it), just keep smiling and walk on.

Via Like Cool.