Guy Hacks Nintendo Power Glove to Control Music With Finger Movements

Okay, this guy basically looks and sounds like he is bending music at his own will with his hacked Power Glove, and watching him do his thing is as trippy and fascinating as you can imagine. 

In order to make this psychedelic and geeky video possible Sam Battle aka "Look Mum No Computer" hacked Nintendo's legendary Power Glove for his synth setup to adjust electronic tunes by the movement of his fingers.

SEE ALSO: OPENAI'S FUTURISTIC JUKEBOX GENERATES MUSIC IN ANY GENRE FROM SCRATCH

Power Glove into a music instrument

To freshen up some's memories, Power Glove, originally released in 1989, is a controller accessory for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It gained public attention due to its early virtual reality mechanics and significant marketing; however, it was sadly a miss due to its impreciseness and difficult-to-use controls.

Now, people are finding new uses for this retro glove, and Battle, a musician/DIY enthusiast, has made it into a, sort of Skynet-esque, musical instrument. 

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

A post shared by LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER (@lookmumnocomputer) on May 24, 2020 at 2:59am PDT

Put it on and make music

Thanks to the quasi-gesture controller that he successfully modified to go along with his modular synth setup, Battle is able to slip his hand into the Power Glove and make adjustments to the filter cutoff, pitch, pulse width, and volume of his audio by bending and wiggling his fingers. 

It doesn't stop there since he also made his own animatronic hand that takes input from the synth to control the glove, and which in turn, controls the synth. It's a one-of-a-kind feedback loop that makes for some sweet music.

'Rendering the human redundant'

On his Instagram post, he wrote, "After making the POWERGLOVE make music it was then about making the human redundant in the situation so I made a rig out of an @inmoov_robot arm and some electronics to make the synth control the arm which controlled the glove which controlled the synth. Rendering the human redundant ☺️"

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

A post shared by LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER (@lookmumnocomputer) on May 25, 2020 at 2:25am PDT

The circuit he used is online

Moreover, he has shared the circuit he used to make this innovation possible. He wrote, "This is the circuit I used, it offsets the voltage, boosts it and then you can add a slew to smoothen it off a bit, and then you can attenuvert it. [its] a useful thing to have around for other sensors. gyroscopes would work well with this."

He can also pet kittens with it, which is always a plus.

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

A post shared by LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER (@lookmumnocomputer) on May 23, 2020 at 4:18am PDT

You can check out the video, especially around the seven-minute mark, to hear some pretty cool music.

Battle has shared the details of how he made the project possible in his video, and by combining it with the circuit diagram, you can actually build your own Power Glove to bend music at your will.