Estefannie, Look Mum No Computer Partner on a Machine to Turn Cryptocurrency Into Music
Based on a Python web scraper and some analog circuitry, this synth is driven by changes in cryptocurrency pricing.
Software engineer and self-described "electrical engineer wannabe" Estefannie and musical machine maker Sam Battle, also known as Look Mum No Computer, have joined forces to build a device that turns cryptocurrency price information into music — courtesy of a Raspberry Pi.
"Sam was looking for someone to help out with some code, and so naturally I volunteered," Estefannie explains. "Essentially I had to write a program that gets crypto values in real time as input and output voltages that change every time the crypto coin value changes. At the same time Sam made a synth that used the voltage variances and make music with it."
"After a few days [Estefannie] mustered up a plan using a Raspberry Pi and sending out pulse-width modulation signals which can be filtered down into analog voltages," Battle explains, "which thankfully was a heck of a lot simpler than my suggestion to her which was using digital to analog converters.
"She showed me her breadboard setup which had 10 cryptocurrency values being portrayed on LEDs with just a simple resistor and capacitor between the led and the Raspberry Pi pin. These pins were sending out voltages that were correlating to the percentage of change that that certain cryptocurrency was experiencing at that certain moment in time — and wiring this up and hearing the note change for the very first time was pretty pretty awesome."
More information on the project, and links to videos from both Battle and Esteffanie, can be found on Estefannie's website; Raspberry Pi has also published its own write-up.
Thus far, neither the source code nor hardware designs have not been publicly released.