[CrazyStat]

Surely it wouldn't be much harder to build an actual theremin rather than faking it with lidar?

Certainly the real theremin is conceptually simpler, though the availability of pre-packaged lidar chips removes a lot of the complexity.

[marcosdumay]

This is a peak "the software is eating the world" design.

There are theremin designs will all levels of complexity, and the simpler ones look simpler than this one to me (just by virtue of consuming less power and thus being able to power from a simple battery). But well, I guess there are all kinds of adjustments that you can do digitally on the pi that wouldn't be practical on a protoboard.