Category: Assignments

Concept

Inspired by Jet’s examples of doorbells with physical chimes, and my last post about Ballet Mecanique, I wanted to make something both percussive and tonal that responded to a digital event stream. I thought it would be fun to reproduce something like the chimes used in theaters to signal the end of intermission, but have it triggered by my Google Calendar rather than an usher.

To accomplish this I made a python program based heavily on the quickstart offered by the Google Calendar API, which checks the time until the next meeting on my calendar, and when that meeting is a certain number of minutes away, it plays a chime to indicate the amount of time remaining (5, 4, 1, or 0 minutes were chosen arbitrarily).

Demo

Tech Stuff

The only hardware used is a pair of servo motors, and the Sparkfun board connected to the laptop (for serial and power connectivity). When the board is sent a character corresponding to a note (A, B, C, D, E, or F… G was too far), it first rotates the base to the appropriate angle to line up the mallet with the note, and then the other motor strikes the note. This allows the Python program to dictate the note sequence as a simple string of characters, and does not require reprogramming the microcontroller to make new chimes.

code: netChime.zip

Using an Arduino and mechanical/kinematic devices, create sounds that map to machine states or input streams.  Interrupt driven sounds are also good.  Create a language of sequences or sounds that you can easily demonstrate in class.

Look for diversity in sound sources: bells, knockers, spinning motors or steppers that drive devices that make repetitive sounds.

Problem

I often set alarms and timers to leave for class or meetings. What I’ve realized over time is that I misjudge the amount of time that has passed on the timer and I am often not ready to move onto the next task/ leave the house when the timer goes off. Traditionally, you would have to physically go check the timer and now you can ask Alexa how much time is left on your timer. However, both of these require initiation of the interaction from the user and not from the timer. I wanted to create a timer which would notify me every quarter of the way through the set time.

My Solution

I used a Arduino Uno, a Piezo Speaker and a potentiometer. The potentiometer was used to set the length of the timer. The Piezo speaker played the arpeggio of a scale. After a fourth of the time had passed it played the 1st note, after half the time it played the first 2 notes etc. This gave a sense of finality to the end of the timer as it would start at C4 and end at C5.

Assignment7 Files

Link to Video

Improvements

A suggestion was made to link this to my google calendar which I thought it was a great idea. Another awesome suggestion was have it notify me exponentially so that as it got closer and closer to the end of the timer there would me many more notifications.

Problem:

Audio announcements are often used to deliver information to a large group of people; airports, restaurants, stores, and museums are all prime examples of areas where this is common practice. However, since people have different preferences as well as linguistic and cognitive ability, these sorts of audio announcements would be made more accessible if people were able to control certain aspects of this audio.

Proposed Solution:

My proposed solution is demonstrated rather simply, and takes advantage of the Arduino tone function’s use of internal time keeping. This allows a looped audio track (that represents an announcement in this case) to be interrupted at any time to change its speed. Using a potentiometer, users can change the speed of the audio by a factor between 0 and 2 times.

Proof of Concept:

Fritzing Sketch and Arduino Code

Problem

For this assignment, I focused on gesture interaction – which is my current interest – and I thought that gesture interaction has powerful strengths compared to others. It is fast and quiet. Also, it overcomes physical distance so that we could control things without actually touching them.

I came up with a situation when we are listening to music through a speaker or watching TV, we become difficult to hear other sounds. When someone calls us or other situations that we have to urgently stop the music and focus on other sounds, it is sometimes really difficult to do it fast. If we are using a laptop to listen to music, we have to find the mute or pause button and then push it with our hands – which takes much more attention (sight, physical) and time. When we watching TV or listening to music through a smartphone, it will be similar.

General Solution

Thus, I decided to use gesture control to stop the music quickly and urgently. By raising a hand and making a fist, which I thought that it is intuitive for humans to stop something, users could pause the music. After it is paused, using the same gesture, they could play the music again.

Proof of Concept

In order to track the hand gestures, I used the Leap Motion sensor. It is really easy to pause and play music using simple gestures. I wanted to design new types of gestures to make the gesture interaction more natural and intuitive. However, other than the created database of hand gestures, it seems like it requires to create my own database, which was challenging to me.

Codes & Video

JAY_Assignment_07_gesture_sound

Inspiration

We’ve all had the intuition that the music we listen to can affect our heart rate, whether its getting us excited or calming us down, and at least one scientific study has found some evidence to confirm this suspicion. There is even some evidence that we may match heartbeats with our partners when we’re near them.

With this in mind I attempted to create a prototype to play a melody with the goal of encouraging the user to raise or lower their heart rate to match a target.

Setup

The program measures time between beats and translates that into a BPM measurement. This measurement is averaged with the target to create a match beat halfway between the target and measured BPM. As the rates converge the music plays in time with the heart beats of the user.

Beat measurements are simulated with a pushbutton, and a modulated sound output plays an F6 arpeggio at the match rate. F6 was chosen from experience to work well both as an uplifting and calming chord for either raising or lowering heart rate.

Demo

Tech Stuff

The circuit is pretty basic. A button pulls down pin 3 to trigger an interrupt which calculates the time since the last interrupt to measure current heart rate (this represents a heart monitor). Audio output is on pin 13 (with a 100Ω resistor in series), and the onboard RGB LED cycles along with each note in the sequence.

Code and wiring: BeatMaker.zip

Problem: Info monitors on the back of seats in airplanes provide nice-to-have information, such as total flight time, time till destination, and nearby locations on the ground.  These monitors are often visual-only, assuredly to not disturb nearby guests, but this makes them inaccessible to the visually impaired.  Converting this information to audio inside earbuds or headphones would be an easy and unobtrusive fix.

Solution: Because these headrest monitors already have audio jacks, reusing them to communicate this information would be easy using established screen reading tech or more elegant selection methods beyond a touch screen.  This introduces the difficulty of limiting audio, and potentially distracting from important announcements.  This leads to the second possible part of this assignment: making often garbled announcements more understandable for those hard of hearing with this audio jack.  More or less, this all boils down to an interruptable info stream of important flight info.

Solution: The solution is simple, two psuedo-threads of audio, switchable between with a button press simulating a pilot or flight attendant’s announcement.  The “information” like distance to destination is simulated with a tone from a pot right now, since I have no idea about playing samples yet.  Being interruptable lets any outside announcement alert the user to plug in and listen, actually give them the info, or more.

Files + Video

Due next Tuesday.

For this assignment, using an Arduino, generate sound-over-time and sound-by-interrupt that conveys meaning, feeling, or specific content.  You can generate sound with a speaker or a kinetic device (ex: door chime) or some other novel invention.

This is a good time to use push buttons or other inputs to trigger sound and another input to define the type of sound.

My example in class was how my phone *doesn’t* do this well.  If I am listening to music and someone rings my doorbell at home, my phone continues to play music *and* the doorbell notification sound at the same time.  What it should do is stop the music, play the notification, then give me the opportunity to talk to the person at the door, then continue playing music.