Starter Project
My voice changer is now functional. It took me a little more than two days to complete it and it was an interesting journey. Most of it involved soldering but I did face a few problems such as getting a clear sound from my speaker. When facing this problem I noticed that my speaker kept repeating specific sounds. With the help of Kyle we came to the conclusion that the speaker and microphone were too close creating a cycle of one sound. To fix that we decided to cover the speaker so that the microphone wasn’t hearing the sounds it was emitting and that is what encouraged me to tape a Duracell box around it. This gave me a clear sound and led me to the completion of this project. It was very interesting and had cool results. It is able to alter the pitch of someones voice by speaking into the microphone and also make them sound like a robot by toggling through the pushbuttons. Overall my voice changer works great and I am proud of my results.
Starter Project #2
My second starter project was much more difficult in understanding and constructing than my first project. This second project is a Junior Theremin which produces music based on a wire sensor that detects your hand to change the sounds it makes. It also consists of two buttons that changes the pitch of the music. Throughout its construction I found it very confusing being that when I was given it I didn’t understand its function. I faced the problem of it having lots of short circuit, which in the end kept it from functioning, and I also faced the challenge of understanding how to assemble the aerial wire. Overall I had alot of fun through the trial and error which in the end taught me alot.
Milestone #1
So far, I’ve completed the wiring for my Arcade MIDI controller and it involved a lot of learning and understanding things I’ve never seen before. To wire this I used a schematic on insructables.com and it was much simpler to understand than many other schematics. It showed me where each wire needed to be and what the connections would look like. But I was soon confused as to how to make a multi component connection. After a few days of help from Mark and Darshan I understood how I could use a breadboard to test my connections and create connections between more than one wire. So what my project consists of as of now is a breadboard, UNO Arduino, 12 arcade buttons, 4 volume knobs, 1 4.7K resistor, and 2 sliding potentiometers. Once understanding schematics and breadboards it was pretty much smooth sailing and I feel comfortable moving into programming.
Milestone #2
I have recently finished programming and downloading the necessary software. With that being said all my components such as my buttons and potentiometers are responding. It wasn’t that long of a process being that I had already found a code to use ahead of time. But a problem I faced was understanding the function and how to access the Serial MIDI converter which actually converts MIDI messages into messages my Arduino can understand. Other than that everything else was pretty simple and was completed quickly. Now I’m looking forward to finding a program to run my MIDI controller in so I can be pretty much done.