2019-05-10 (F) Weekly Summary

Once upon a time, I received a Rothult cabinet lock from IKEA as a possibility for grinder hardware that could lock a container even there it wasn't a highly secure method. For $20USD, it was worth investigating, and the equipment within was robust for the price. While opening my own lock, I searched for someone else who had done the same and found a resource. Someone in the HaD comment section found the same article, so they were credited with the find.

My Electronic WindChimes project took a detour so that a rudimentary drum machine could feed a tempo to the unit and provide the percussion. I picked basic hardware that would be quick for construction. The controller plugged into a socket where the points were broken out to screw terminals, and all the buttons were a single board with touch-sensitive pads. The touchpad rested on a piezo element for feedback on how had a button was pressed. In a way, it was a pressure sensing pad that could detect which of eight sections had been touched.
Hardware for a drum machine

All the connections needed testing. The rotary switch would change modes, and there was a problem with the switch where a washer was misplaced and disabled everything. The next relationship was between the controller and switches with found a cold solder joint. For the MIDI output, a program sent a single note every second and the synthesizer had no trouble receiving it.
All the working connections

Programming started with mode one which sent a MIDI note on channel ten when a button was touched. The note's velocity was determined by the analog input from the piezo element under the button pad.
(0:23) Testing buttons and velocity

 Mode two set the tempo by treating all the buttons as a single input and recording the time between taps to set the speed. After talking with a musician, I found out this is called "tap tempo."
 (0:35) Demonstration of tap tempo

The third mode created a loop based on the tempo and instruments touched. While in this mode, the loop would cycle forever and instantly update whenever a new button was pressed. Velocity was recorded alongside the notes. Time for the cycle was determined by the tempo so many sounds could be crammed into a short span or a single sound could be played with a long time between iterations.
(1:31) Loop mode on LittleDB

The rest of the summary posts have been arranged by date.

First time here?

Completed projects from year 1
Completed projects from year 2
Completed projects from year 3
Completed projects from year 4
Completed projects from year 5
Completed projects from year 6

Disclaimer for http://24hourengineer.blogspot.com and 24HourEngineer.com




