This Umbrella Plays Music When it Rains

One of the cooler things to come out of Amsterdam's Music Hack Day.

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Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

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When thinking of ideas for the Amsterdam-based Music Hack Day, Alice Zappe and Julia Lager, two hackers hailing from Berlin, wanted to create an app that recommended food based on the user's musical tastes. That idea proved to too difficult, so they settled on something just as cool and a lot simpler: an umbrella that plays music when it rains. 

The two hackers took a regular umbrella and outfitted it with 12 piezo sensors, an Arduino Uno open source micro-controllers, and two speakers. When rain hits the top of the umbrella, the pressure is picked up by the sensors, then the Uno relays the signal to the speaker, which creates an randomized 8-bit symphony. 

There's no word on what the two plan to do with their creation, especially since Zappe admitted that the umbrella's sounds aren't always mellifluous. "We have to admit it does get a bit annoying after some time," Zappe told the BBC

[via BBC]

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