Finished TouchStrip instrument!

Happy with the end result, very playable and fun! Check out the video:

Also successfully got the xylophone to  make noises today, lots more work required for a finished instrument though!

Xylophone

For my third and most likely final instrument of the project, I've been building a xylophone using piezo transducers for trigger detection. You may notice some plastic bongos in the back of this picture - I've been attempting to get Nintendo's 'DK bongos' to behave with an arduino but I've not had much luck yet.

The main circuit is pretty much wired up now - each of the 12 keys on the xylophone has a piezo transducer wired to an analog pin on an arduino mega. This allows for you to trigger notes of varying volume.

I also plan to use an ultrasonic sensor to alter the sound of the notes. I've tested this out on a breadboard earlier in this project as can be seen in this video:

It's worth mentioning that the 'bass' instrument is now complete as well as the pianocade I'll film a video soon.

Finished Pianocade!

Here it is, my finished 'Pianocade' with a video demo of how to play it!

Here's a few more details:

• Arcade buttons - one octave of notes in standard piano tuning
• Joystick Up/Down - up or down an octave
• Joystick Left/Right - change speed of arpeggio 
• Slider - Select sound from 8 different wave shapes

Very proud of the end result, I feel its really fun and easy to play, a good thing to mess around on! Looking forward to seeing people try it out.

Next up, finishing the assembly of the bass instrument, and testing playing the two together.

Pianocade

Laser cut the body for the keyboard instrument today. Sadly it cut at a 5% bigger scale than I designed but I should be able to still get things to fit in okay.

The arcade buttons are just big enough to not fall through! Time to wire them up.

I'm also setting up this nice joystick in a hole on the left of the arcade buttons!

Laser Cutting

Laser cut the body for the first instrument this afternoon!

Popped the parts inside the body to give you an idea of what it'll look like once it has been assembled.

Parts have arrived!

Joysticks, switches and a tonne of arcade buttons, its time to get building!

Scott's Sweet Launcher

My friend Scott has just started work on his project in the lab with me, a pneumatically driven targeting sweet launcher! Check out his blog here: The Sweet Launcher

He's been a great help with stuff on my project and he's an absolute boss at electronics so I'm sure he's going to be doing some really impressive stuff.

We're both working as part of the Blake Bursary Project - where we work on the project of our choice as a demo for open days and workshops to give an insight into Electrical and Electronic engineering and the cool things we can make with it.

Veroboard

Taken the nunchuck casing off and re-soldered it's board to the new veroboard. Everything is ready to be mounted in a case, just waiting for the 3way switch to arrive.

Starting work now on an arcade button keyboard instrument in the style of a 'pianocade'
(See http://www.pianocade.com/)

Joystick

Almost done with instrument one here's a video, it 's really starting to feel like a playable instrument now!

I now have the joystick on the nunchuck working in real time like the accelerometer, it has a really nice feel to it. Here's the controls and what they do:

• Touch/Pressure strip (to be combined) triggers the note and changes pitch as you move along it
• Joystick decides the octave (up octave normal or down octave)
• Accelerometer changes the rate of duty cycle variation

All I'm waiting for now is a 3 way switch to arrive so you can select the duty cycle, then I'm going to put this instrument together in a (potentially laser cut) plastic box, like in the badly drawn sketch I did before:

Prototyping

I'm pretty much done with prototyping / coding for the first instrument. I've managed to get pitch bend working on a softpot (potentiometer touch strip) and triggering the notes with a pressure sensor:

Also the nunchuck works now in real time to modify the sound as you play the notes - in this case the speed of duty cycle variation.

This now will be put together in a case so the pressure and touch strip are combined as one strip and the nunchuck will be built into the case so you tilt the instrument to vary the sound. I'll also be adding control parameters to the joystick of the nunchuck.

Here's a badly drawn sketch to show you what the instrument will look like:

The idea is to hold the instrument in your hands, playing the touch strip with the thumb of one hand and messing with the joystick/switch/dial with the other hand, as well as tilting the instrument.

The joystick will change the octave of the touch strip, and add pitch bend. The dial controls the length of the note and the 3way switch determines whether the duty cycle is 12.5%, 25% or 50%.

Nunchuck

Just a short update video, I've managed to translate the data from the Wii nunchuck's accelerometer, joystick and buttons into midi data on an arduino micro that is sent via the link cable to the gameboy.

In the demo I'm using the 'Z' button to play a note, and the y axis of the accelerometer to change the speed of the pitch bend.

Next up, working on the pressure sensitive touch strip (softpot) to play varying notes!

We have control!

While I wait for all my parts to come in, I've built a prototype controller based on an arduino to test out controlling the sound-chip of the gameboy:

In the video above, there are 3 inputs:

• Push button - for playing a note

• Potentiometer - for changing the pitch of a note

• Ultrasonic sensor - for changing the duty cycle of the square wave

This project is all based around MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) - I'm planning to build four instruments that use MIDI to control the sound-chip of the gameboy - a lead, chord, bass and drum instrument hence '8-bit band'.  I have to say many thanks to Sprites mods for the link cable to midi design without this, the project wouldn't be possible: http://spritesmods.com/?art=gbamidi&page=2

The first of these instruments I'm working on is a bass instrument. You play the note on a pressure sensitive softpot touch strip and alter the sound with a joystick and by tilting the instrument.

my rough sketch for bass instrument inputs

I'm using the parts from a wii nunchuk for the accelerometer and joystick (keeping the instrument styling game themed!) As the nunchuck has arrived, that's what I'm working on next.

Laser Harp

I'm starting a summer project for the Bristol University Blake Bursary. The plan is to build multiple musical instruments that can be played together using the sound-chip of just one gameboy - hence the title '8-bit band'. More on that in a later post!

The test run for this project was a 24 hour ARM Campus Engineering Challenge on 29th March, here's a time-lapse of the day:

The rules were as follows:

You have 

• 24 hours
• A team of 3 - 5 people
• 1 Microcontroller 

Make something cool!

'What's cooler than lasers?' said our team, so we attempted to build a laser harp! What is a laser harp, you're probably asking. Here's a demo of a proper $1000ish laser harp in action:

So with a team of 3 electronic engineers and 2 mechanical engineers we set out to build our very own. After 24 hours of no sleep, fuelled on caffeine and pizza we had a functioning harp which wasn't quite as flashy as the one in the above video, but was still really fun to play.

Here's a little promo video of the event:

Here's a video where I explain how it works, with a little demo of a judge playing it at the end:

Feedback from the judges:

'A special mention to team “destroy them with lasers” whose laser harp was really well presented and engineered creation. It’s rendition of ‘a space odyssey’ was particularly entertaining.' - Sam Walder

'Lots of fun, would be great for open days. Can I have one?' - Mike Barton

This is just what we were looking for as this is the main purpose for the Blake Bursary project this summer - building something fun and interactive to be used for open days and other similar events.

With this, I've now began working on my '8-bit band' project. More on that soon!