MIDI Project

February 7, 2021
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Tangible Interaction

1. New Concept

I really want to put more efforts in physical components rather than coding side. So I decided to change a new idea for the MIDI project. I started looking for inspirations. The very first thing I can think of was music-box.

Typical music box (source here)

So why not making a flat music box? I drew the idea as below. Holes were drilled and aligned as a group of 7 on every radius in the round panel. Light sensors lied under the panel and LED lights were lit up above. When the panel rotated, light sensors trigger notes where the holes that were not covered. Therefore, we can make a song by filling different holes.

Concept

System Diagram

The required components are:

  1. unipolar motor and driver (to rotate the round panel)
  2. Potentiometer to change the rotating speed.
  3. 7 light sensor module (photo-resistor +resistor )
  4. switch
  5. 7 LED Neopixel strips
  6. Arduino Nano 33 IoT

2 Physical Computing Testing

I tested the feasibility of light sensor to trigger notes. It's feasible. But now it's hard to trigger two notes at the same time. The code need to change to millis so as to execute without delay function.

3 Next Steps

4.15 - 4.18

  1. Change codes to realize playing chords at the same time
  2. Use potentiometer to change the speed of stepper motor

4.19 - 4.22

  1. Photoresistor arrived. Make a big round panel, and mid panel.
  2. Mount all components and test.

4.23 - 4.30

  1. User testing and modify.

5.1-5.7

  1. Continue user testing and modifying

4 Exploration (if possible)

  • Direction 1: Make a set of instruments, each of which plays a layer of melody to enrich the music.
  • Direction 2: Add a different sensor to detect so as to determine the pitch level.

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Appendix

Source code see HERE.

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