For my midterm PIT project, I’d like to try my hand at fabricating the physical structure for a book that plays sound when you open it to certain pages.

I created a rough prototype for this last semester in PComp using a regular book and sticking some copper tape on opposing pages, activating sound when the copper tape was not touching its counterpart on the opposite page.  In this way, the sound plays only for the page that the book is opened to.

My ideal version of this has all component housed inside the spine of the book.  This requires fabricating a custom book housing with a hollow spine that can fit a tiny arduino inside.  Each page of the book needs to be separate (as opposed to traditional book-binding where 4 pages are on one sheet), so that it can have a precision-cut piece of copper tape that passes through the interior spine and hooks into the arduino.

The hardest part will be getting the project completely off-computer: I am currently using a Max patcher to activate the audio, which plays through the computer.  I’d like to build a headphone jack and/or small speaker into the spine, and get it all as close to self-contained as possible, even if this PIT version still has a USB sticking out the top leading to the computer.  I at least want to get the arduino inside the spine and the custom pages created & assembled.