ThereminPi

The ThereminPi is electronic musical instrument developed in 2013 by the Italian engineer and composer Andrea Lomuscio.
It's a digital optical Theremin, so whereas the resulting sound is almost the same, the working principle it's completely renewed and simplified with respect to a classic Theremin. Moreover the ThereminPi introduces new features not present on conventional theremins.
Specifications
The instrument can be controlled without physical contact by the performer thanks to 2 optical sensors. These sensors are the same used in the auto-flush toilet sensors in public restrooms; so they are very cheap and they can detect accurately the position of performer's hands in a range from 10cm to 80cm using the principle of triangulation. Then the optical measurement is converted into an analog voltage and an internal A/D converter transform the latter one into a digital value. Andrea Lomuscio simplified the design removing all the analog circuitry and generating the sound using an ARM microcomputer: the RaspberryPi.
Playing Techniques
The ThereminPi has 3 play modes: classic, fixed volume and auto-tune.
In classic mode the performer can play the instrument like a conventional theremin, with the difference that both hands must be moved in vertical direction.
In the fixed volume mode the performer can use just one hand to play the instrument, while the volume sensor can be used to modulate the sound.
In auto-tune mode the performer can choose a key and a scale and the instrument will skip automatically all the unwanted notes.

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