The Making of H2Do Ray Me, Part 1

Using water to act as switches, Sean and I have been building a water-piano. Building on the physical motif of keys, the water-piano is composed of a series of keys. Each key has two parts: the cup of water and a paddle.

Much of our prototyping focused on the mechanism of pressing the key: finding the right fulcrum point and how the fulcrum interfaced with the key itself.

We tried a number of different cups and found that the combination of tallness and sloped sides worked well for containing the water and sitting in within the paddle.

We looked at different ways to maintain the alignment and stability of the key when it was pressed.

Vertical elements under the key prevented moved the fulcrum off the base of the cup to the point at which the vertical element starts sloping.

A straw sandwiched between two pieces of cardboard created a hinge to rotate around.

By using the corrugated cardboard, we further simplified the assembly to a single layer of material by aligning the corrugations with the hinge and slipping an 1/8” dowel inbetween the ridges.