London Reese and Cassandra Durand, age 12, designed a touch sensitive micro:bit guitar. If they press one of the copper tape strips, midi sounds blast out of speakers or a gaming headset. They also have a string of bit lights across the front to visualize the music. Different colors for different notes.

London and Cassandra designed the project as part of an after school electronics group hosted by SteamHead and Moralture Education Group in Shenzhen, China. After completing the project, they submitted the finished piece to the MakeFashion Edu STEAM Runway challenge, and won a spot on the runway where London exhibited the guitar in Shekou’s 2018 runway event.

The idea came up as part of a wilderness survival challenge, inspired by Tuft University’s Novel Engineering concept, where students read books about wilderness survival and then used electronics to invent ways of addressing problems they identified.

London and Cassandra actually pointed to the dangers of depression and hopelessness, portrayed in Gary Paulsen’s Hatchet, as something that is rarely addressed in survival scenarios. Each team of students in the challenge came up with their own invention to help people survive a month lost in the wilderness. Other projects included devices to scare away dangerous animals, a hand-motion controlled car to help a single person use “pack hunt” strategies to hunt rabbits, and means of carrying gear while on the move.