CopperKeys is a capacitive touch piano. It features one octave (C3-B3) and uses the touch pins on an ESP32 to register inputs. Each note is played by simply touching the copper areas, and a single speaker on top of the body outputs the sound as a tone.

CopperKeys was designed in ~3 hours for a Hackathon. I made this project because I enjoy listening and producing music. I wanted to create something portable that would allow me to play melodies on the go.

Overall, I enjoyed creating it. It was fun to experiment with the ESP32 and combine its built-in touch pins with music.

The first step was to program the ESP32.

For this task, I used Arduino IDE. When the microcontroller receives a signal that a key is pressed, a speaker will play a sound corresponding to the frequency of that note.

After programming was done, I placed conductive copper tape on top of a previously printed piano body, which was modelled with Fusion360 and then 3D printed. 

Duct tape, jumper wires, and a Devkit were used for quick prototyping.