Fun new DIY kit: Adafruit's "Drawdio" musical pencil

Our friends at Adafruit have released a fun new kit called the "Drawdio" — adapted from the original Drawdio design by Jay Silver – which lets you create a pencil that makes noisy almost-music via the variations in the resistance of graphite pencil lead. It's $20 plus shipping. I just ordered one so I can recreate my middle school notebook sketches to literally hear the music of the anime spheres.

Drawdio product page [LadyAda.net]

[#1 posted by dove , October 9, 2008 11:26 AM]

WHY would anyone want a pencil that recreates the sound of a dental drill!!!

I just had horrible horrible horrible orthodontic flashbacks...

[#2 posted by magicseth , October 9, 2008 11:28 AM]

There is a better video of it on
YouTube

[#3 posted by Agies , October 9, 2008 11:56 AM]

It's like a cross between Picture Pages and a prison tattoo gun.

[#4 posted by RedShirt77 , October 9, 2008 1:06 PM]

Yeah, Can they program it to do this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWg0U3fi7sE

[#5 posted by pork musket , October 9, 2008 1:37 PM]

@3 Hell yeah, if they can get Cosby involved I'm sold.

[#6 posted by overunger , October 9, 2008 11:21 PM]

I'm sorry, but that just seems stupid and crappy. It's not even consistent- there's random pauses that make it choppy.

I could see,though, glitch music and circuit bender aficionados would probably eat it up.

[#7 posted by Anonymous , October 10, 2008 11:54 AM]

It needs to be demoed in a way that makes it seem less random, that is, that it is actually working, not just reacting to other stimuli, or none at all.

For Example, draw a barcode of sorts in graphite, or some resistive surface, and then draw the drawdio across that, to see if that does anything.

Or is it just squeaking due to stress on the graphite lead. I want to call BS until a better demo is made.