Pipes of pan
The boom-whacker or pipes of pan exhibit is an old favorite. Tune a series of pipes to different notes and the musical visitor hits the tubes to play a tune. We have added a tune guide to make it easier to use.
We have scaled this up to two full octaves and allow the non-musical to play tunes.
We use 25 black and white tubes in the pattern of a piano keyboard to build the instrument itself creating two octaves of notes. The second octave hugely increases the number of tunes you can play.
It doesn't help a lot though if you can't play the piano. So we have a panel where you can pick the tube and then moving lights appear around the tube you should hit next. There are sensors in each tube that means the exhibit knows when to move onto the next note, allowing you to play the tune even if you are tone deaf.
It is straightforward to change the tunes (if you want to change them for different times of year etc.) by changing a file on a USB stick.