Chicken Piano

I wanted to create a way for my lovely chickens to become artists themselves!

After training them for a couple of months before this grand performance (what a great job they did!), I wired up this thrift store Fisher Price piano to a trigger switch that would initiate the camera shutter every time a key was pecked.

Each key triggered the same camera...would be cool to have a different camera per each key...hmm, maybe next time.

I used regular old guitar strings as flexible conductors underneath the piano keys. When the key was hit, the conductive string would touch a conductive cross wire (connected to the camera trigger) and when the two wires made contact, they would close an electronic circuit and allow the camera to take a picture.

Each picture is in real time, well a few milliseconds delayed, of the key being struck.

Can you guess who pecked which key?!

This is from summer 2022. Inspired by a Dogbotic Labs workshop.