The Clapper was a popular gadget in the 80’s and 90’s. It let you turn appliances on and off just by clapping. This can be pretty useful, but it has some limitations. First there is the problem of loud noises accidentally turning the lights off. Also, you can’t control multiple outlets independently of each other.
So I decided to make programmable version of the Clapper using an Arduino microcontroller. The Arduino lets you set codes for each outlet. This eliminates false triggering and lets you control multiple outlets independently. Your lamp could be turned on and off with one clapping pattern and your fan could be controlled with another pattern.
What can a guy that has a 5000-volume library complete with a 1930’s era pipe organ (see around 2:20 in the video below) do to enhance his reading space? I’m not sure what my answer would be, but for Craig Landrum, the answer was to build a sound-reactive shelving unit. […]
Some of you may have noticed that words like rhythm, texture, pattern, can be used both to describe fabrics, as well as sound. Focused on building an interface as a whole, using mostly textiles, OCHO TONOS invites the user to interact through touch, and experience sound in a multi-sensorial way. Ocho Tonos is an interactive installation by EJTech duo (Esteban de la Torre and Judit Eszter Kárpáti) I met last July during etextile summer camp while they were working on this experimental textile interface for tactile/sonic interaction by means of tangibles:
Exploring the relation between sound and textile and experimenting with the boundaries of our senses whilst changing the way we perceive fabric, surfaces and their manifestation as sound. Recontextualizing our tactile interaction with textile acting as an interface, where each element triggers, affects and modifies the generated sound’s properties. Creating a soundscape through sensor technology enticing audiophiles to interact and explore with reactive textile elements.The nexus of the body, the senses and technology.
OCHO TONOS is a symbiosis of the unique hand-crafted traditional textile techniques and the immaterial digital media.
Thanks to Arduino Mega ADK , all inputs coming from the touch of the user on the soft sensors are translated into a digital platform, parsed and filtered through MaxMSP, in order to control the generation of a soundscape in Ableton Live.
Ocho Tonos was chopped, spiced and cooked at Kitchen Budapest. Sounds used are samples from the working machinery at TextielLab.
Toot is an interactive and sound-active toy designed for children aged between 3 and 6 years old that wants to enhance their auditory, music and language skills. It was developed by Federico Lameri as his thesis project of Master of Interaction Design at Supsi and prototyped using Arduino Leonardo.
The toy is composed by eight little cubical speaker boxes:
On each speaker children are able to record a sound. In order to listen back to the recorded sound the speaker must be shaken as if the sound was physically trapped into a box. After having recorded sounds on them, the speakers can be placed in a sequence after Mr.toot, and by tapping on his head it is possible to trigger the playback of the speakers in a sequence. toot is also matched with a mobile application that offers different kind of interactions and experiences. it allows to play some exercise that will teach children to listen, understand and catalog sound and melodies.
The app expands the possibilities of interaction, offering different exercises created with the help of musicians and educators from different areas of expertise, some of them are also inspired by a Montessori sensorial activity.
Take a look at the video interview with Montessori educator Fanny Bissa:
Anywhere is a pseudo multichannel installation created by Dmitry Morozov, a Moscow media-artist, musician and engineer of strange-sounding mechanisms. It’s made using 10 speakers, optical relays, an Arduino Uno and a micro sd wav player.
Below you can see the schematic, here’s the sketch and video of the installation in action:
During Codemotion MilanoStefano had a talk with Federico Vanzati from Officine Arduino on how to use a supercheap USB Audio card with Arduino Yún and test the full audio capabilities with zero effort, external libraries or mp3 shields.
After some days he came out with a quick tutorial that you can check out here (includes code!).
In this review of an older kit (circa 1993~1997) we examine the Diesel Sound Simulator for Model Railroads kit from (the now defunct) Dick Smith Electronics, based on the article published in the December 1992 issue of Silicon Chip magazine.
The purpose of this kit is to give you a small circuit which can fit in a HO scale (or larger) locomotive, or hidden underneath the layout – that can emulate the rumbling of a diesel-electric locomotive to increase the realism of a train. However the kit is designed for use with a PWM train controller (also devised by Silicon Chip!) so not for the simple direct-DC drive layouts.
Assembly
The diesel sound kit was from the time when DSE still cared about kits, so you received the sixteen page “Guide to Kit Construction” plus the kit instructions, nasty red disclaimer sheet, feedback card, plus all the required components and the obligatory coil of solder that was usually rubbish:
Everything required to get going is included, except IC sockets. My theory is it’s cheaper to use your own sockets than source older CMOS/TTL later on if you want to reuse the ICs, so sockets are now mandatory here:
The PCB is from the old school of “figure-it-out-yourself”, no fancy silk-screening here:
Notice the five horizontal pads between the two ICs – these were for wire bridges in case you needed to break the PCB in two to fit inside your locomotive.
Actual assembly was straight-forward, all the components went in without any issues. Having two links under IC2 was a little annoying, however a short while later the PCB was finished and the speaker attached:
How it works
As mentioned earlier this diesel sound kit was designed for use with the Silicon Chip train PWM controller, so the design is a little different than expected. It can handle a voltage of around 20 V, and the sound is determined by the speed of the locomotive.
The speed is determined by the back EMF measured from the motor – and (from the manual) this is the voltage produced by the motor which opposes the current flow through it and this voltage is directly proportional to speed.
Not having a 20V DC PWM supply laying about I knocked up an Arduino to PWM a 20V DC supply via an N-MOSFET module and experimented with the duty cycle to see what sort of noises could be possible. The output was affected somewhat by the supply voltage, however seemed a little higher in pitch than expected.
You can listen to the results in the following video:
I reckon the sound from around the twenty second mark isn’t a bad idle noise, however in general not that great. The results will ultimately be a function of a lower duty-cycle than I could create at the time and the values of R1 and R2 used in the kit.
Conclusion
Another kit review over. With some time spent experimenting you could generate the required diesel sounds, a Paxman-Valenta it isn’t… but it was a fun kit and I’m sure it was well-received at the time. To those who have been asking me privately, no I don’t have a secret line to some underground warehouse of old kits – just keep an eye out on ebay and they pop up now and again. Full-sized images and much more information about the kit are available on flickr.
And while you’re here – are you interested in Arduino? Check out my new book “Arduino Workshop” from No Starch Press.
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Dario Buzzini and I have been friends since we met at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea several years ago. Ever since, we have worked together on interaction design projects for different clients. While visiting NYC for World Maker Faire last month, we organized a free open workshop for 25 participants at the IDEO NYC office (where Dario works) focused on creating sounds and music.
“Make Some Noise” was a short, one-day workshop about Arduino where we explored the topic of sound and it was aimed at complete beginners with no experience. To simplify the structure of the workshop we started with hands-on experiments composed by a quick set of exercises to enable the participants to understand the basics and, later on, to start exploring pitch, frequency, tone, and multiple effects—with quite curious results (see videos below)!
To make things even easier, we focused only on one type of output showing how you can relate that output with several types of input, like different sensors. We started, as usual, blinking a LED and then learned how a speaker clicks the same way an LED blinks: if you do it fast enough you can make a sound, if you do it at a specific speed you can make a note, and if you look up at all the frequencies associated with all the notes you can make scales.
After some testing, students were able to create noises, sounds, control them through slide sensors, buttons, potentiometers. At the end, as a fun exercise we used a piece of open source software that one of the Arduino users put on the Arduino Playground, which turns the Arduino into an eight-oscillator synthesizer that can use any piece of metal as a sensor. We then connected eight soda cans with an Arduino and a speaker. It played them as if it was a church organ!
Design and technology have, once again, come together to redefine, shape, and explore new experiences through simple, approachable tools.
“Make some noise” was a short one-day workshop about Arduino where we explored the topic of sound and it was aimed at complete beginners with no experience. To simplify the structure of the workshop we started with hands-on experiments composed by a quick set of exercises to enable the participants to understand the basics and, later on, to start exploring pitch, frequency, tone ,and multiple effects—with quite curious results.
Simple tools used well can produce fantastic results. The hardware which [Gilad] uses in this project is the definition of common. We’d bet you have most if not all of them on hand right now. But the end product is a light box which seems to dance and twirl with every sound in the room. You should go watch the demo video before reading the bill of materials so that the simplicity doesn’t spoil it for you.
A wooden craft box serves as the enclosure. Inside you’ll find an Arduino board, microphone, and an 8×8 RGB module. The front cover of the project box diffuses the light using a sheet of tracing paper on a frame of foam board. It’s the code that brings everything together. He wrote his own particle system library to generate interesting animations.
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