Hand-cranked Toy Piano Hack Keeps the Tunes Coming Forevermore

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Hand-cranked Toy Piano Hack Keeps the Tunes Coming Forevermore

Hand-cranked Toy Piano
When a battery operated device runs out of juice, most of us reach for a fresh pair of AA’s. But when his daughter’s electronic toy piano had drained its batteries, Dominik instead installed a hand-cranked dynamo to power the instrument ad infinitum. He hacked apart an Ikea flashlight to co-opt its cranked generator and installed it inside his daughter’s plaything. Now a little bit of elbow grease keeps the tunes coming while saving the environment and a little bit of money to boot. Not only that, but he also used the remaining parts from the flashlight to upgrade a vintage bicycle light. It doesn’t get much more resourceful than that, folks! [via Ikea Hacker]

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Matt Richardson is a San Francisco-based creative technologist and Contributing Editor at MAKE. He’s the co-author of Getting Started with Raspberry Pi and the author of Getting Started with BeagleBone.

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