Projects · Touch Board · May 26, 2021

Turn Everyday Objects Into Sensors With the Touch Board

Add interactivity to everyday objects: use your houseplants, cutlery and more to trigger sounds on the Touch Board!

Use your Touch Board to give voice to the objects around you. Record a message about which vitamins to take, a reminder to water your plants or even link your favourite song to a metallic photo frame.

We love it when you share your projects! Post your project on Instagram, YouTube, or Twitter, and make sure to tag @bareconductive or use #bareconductive. You can also send your videos and photos to info@bareconductive.com so we can post them on our site for the world to see.

You will need:

1 x Touch Board
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Crocodile clips
MicroSD card reader
Mini speaker

Select your objects

To begin, select the objects you want to make interactive. You can use any objects that are either conductive or metallic.

For this project we’re using a metallic robot, a metal lid from our vitamin jar, and an aluminium rivet inserted into our plant pot.

Change the tracks on the SD card

Take the SD card out of the Touch Board, insert into the microSD card reader and put the reader into your computer/laptop. Open the SD card and you should see a couple of files, including TRACK000.mp3, TRACK001.mp3, etc. up to TRACK011.mp3. These are the files that are played when you touch the corresponding electrode, so when you touch electrode 0 on the Touch Board, it plays TRACK000.mp3 and when you touch electrode 11 on the Touch Board, it plays TRACK011.mp3.

You can change the tracks to any MP3 files that you can find. So this could be songs, sounds or a voice recording. Make sure use the same naming structure.

With your files uploaded to the SD card, eject the SD card and reinsert into the Touch Board. Give the sounds a test, by powering the Touch Board, adding audio and touching the electrodes!

If you want to find these instructions about how to change the MP3 files, have a look at this tutorial here.

Attach the crocodile clips

Once you’re happy with the sounds you’ve uploaded, turn the Touch Board off again. Connect one end of the crocodile clip to the electrode of the Touch Board and connect the other one to the corresponding object.