If you want your kid to be really great at something, you have to start them out early. [Phil Tucker] need to want his kid to be a video gamer pretty badly. [Phil’s] build starts with a $20 IKEA high chair. He likes these chairs because at that price point, tearing into them isn’t a big risk. What’s a lot more is you can get extra trays so you can use it as a modular project with different trays serving different purposes.

The chair has two joysticks and two buttons, looking suspiciously like a video game controller. The current incarnation (see video, below) uses an Arduino Uno to activate an Akai MPC1000 synthesizer by means of the MIDI interface.

Of course, you could control other MIDI devices or even program the Arduino to do other things (like act as a game controller). We’ve seen lots of IKEA hacks, including a laser cutter, a cam slide, and even a printer (not a 3D printer, although we covered that, too).

(Edit: [Phil] sent us another video in which his kid isn’t preoccupied with terribly-interesting glasses.)