Results for piezo

Some interesting things I found recently:

# bassdll – An arduino piezo buzzer sound engine by Drew Crawford.

Source code available at github

# Charting the Beatles – Exploration of Beatles music through infographics.

Charting the Beatles – Authorship and Collaboration

Michael Deal writes:

These visualizations are part of an extensive study of the music of the Beatles. Many of the diagrams and charts are based on secondary sources, including but not limited to sales statistics, biographies, recording sesion notes, sheet music, and raw audio readings.

# MISA digital guitar

The MISA digital guitar is a minimalistic looking MIDI controller.

# Teenage Engineering’s OP-1 Instrument: Hands-on, Videos, Why it’s Different

Teenage Engineering OP-1, portable synthesizer and controller

Peter Kirn spent some hands-on time with the current prototype of the OP-1 and had a talk with the developers of Teenage Engineering.

# mtXcontrol

mtXcontrol by Tobias Bielohlawek is an editor written in Processing to easily create image sequences for several output devices containing multicolor LED matrix.

mtXcontrol Editor auto detects and connects to your device. Once connected, you can draw points, lines & rows in different colors, create multiple frames and manipulate them. Add, delete, move, fill, copy & paste of frames is supported. Play all frames by different speed, realtime update the device and save your work as image file. If supported (e.g. Rainbowduino), update the sequence on your device and run it standalone. One special feature is typing letters and numbers. Future versions aim to support multiple devices, different color depth and many more.

Some interesting things I found recently:

# Tactile Metronome – Wayne and Layne

The Tactile Metronome is a tap-controlled metronome and "beat looper." "Syncopation machine." "Metronome with an attitude."

You tap the piezo speaker to set the frequency. The display shows the beats per minute, and the two buttons adjust the speed.

"Ehhh." "Boring," you say. Not so fast!

You can tap patterns into it, currently up to 12 beats long. As long as you tap the pattern in three times, it jumps in and continues beeping in that rhythm. The metronome can beep in three different tones, so you can play with more than one at a time.

Tactile Metronome features

• Easy to assemble kit makes for a great learning experience. All parts are easy-to-solder through-hole, with no tiny surface mount parts.
• Fully open-source design means that everything is freely available and ready to be hacked, including the circuit schematic, PCB layout, part list, and microcontroller firmware.
• Piezoelectric speaker is used as the pattern input, by simply tapping in the tempo or pattern. Once the metronome learns your pattern, it starts beeping with the same piezo element.
• Seven-segment displays provide feedback in the form of beats-per-minute (BPM) readings.
• Custom, professionally-made PCB provides a solid base for happy tappers. All circuit connections are routed on two layers without the use of vias, reducing confusion while assembling.
• A Pre-programmed Microcontroller means you don’t need a specialized microcontroller programmer to get started with the Tactile Metronome. If you want to experiment with modifying the firmware, an in-circuit serial programming (ICSP) header is provided to enable easy re-programming.

# Circuit bending work station

Matt the modulator built a deluxe substitution box for experimenting with different resistor & capacitor values for circuit bending.

Circuit bending work station

• Resistance pots (4k7, 100k, 1m).
• Capacitance – 12 caps selector poly 47-pf, 100-pf, 470-pf, 1-nf, 4n7 nf, 10-nf, 100nf, 1-uf, 1uf elec 1uf, 4.7uf, 10uf, 100uf.
• LED.
• Signal tracer simply a 1w amp maplin kit to trace audio signal in a circuit.

… read more

Some interesting things I found recently:

# Blushing Boy Peacock

We have been working in a concept for a different type of music instrument. Putting together some feminist theory of music, some love for strange sounding animals, a laser engraver, a bunch of sliders, some orange LEDs and a lot of patience, we created the Peacock.

The Peacock is an instrument for live performace or personal exploration of both live and digitized sounds. You can get sound from an SD card or record it through its mic-in. The sound will be looped and affected in different ways by different effects and digital filters.

# * Casper Electronics » Drone Lab

The Drone Lab is an analog sound module specially designed for making dense, rich drones.

Peter Edwards writes:

I wanted to design something that could fit in your hand but still deliver some heavy sound.

Some interesting things I found on August 20th, 2008:

# AtomoSynth: New Mochika2. MIDI Sync

Mochika2 features

• One square and saw waveform VCO (voltage controlled oscillator) with a huge pitch range, from subsonic to ultrasonic sound.
• One square and triangle waveform LFO (low frequency oscillator), that modulates the VCO for the vibrato effect creating old school arcade Atari-like sounds.
• White noise generator that triggers the VCO and can create percussion like sounds.
• 8 step Sequencer with note on/off switch and pitch knob for each step .
• It has a 1/4 inch audio output, 1/4 inch CV Output (to control other analog gear).
• A MIDI input to sync the Mochika with any midi device sending midi clock signals, the mochika can sync 1,2,4 and 8 times the tempo of the master clock midi device.
• 1 ultra bright red led that indicates the LFO Rate, and 8 red leds to indicate the step that is being played. Very useful when you play it on a dark stage.

# Negotiated Project B: Live Gigging Visualisation System – Check Luke McGowan's real-time music visualisation system.

# How-To: Hack a ThingamaKIT – The ThingamaKIT is an anthropomorphic analog synthesizer kit from Bleep Labs. Using "LEDacles", photoresistors, knobs, and switches, it generates interesting high pitched vocalizations. Bleep Labs sent us a review unit and this article shares our experiences building and using the kit. We've also included a tutorial on making some hacks, modifications, and circuit bends to it. Skip to the end to see a video of our hacked kit in action.

# Arduinome: An Arduino-Based Monome Clone, Behind the Scenes – A Monome clone based on the Arduino microcontroller.

The “Arduinome” gifts the Monome with two new possibilities. First, it’s a breakthrough on the availability front: at a time when official Monome kits are backordered, it makes it easier to make your own Monome on a budget. Second, it makes hardware hacking on the Monome far easier, by allowing people to make microcontroller-level modifications on the relatively friendly Arduino platform. (The Arduino was designed not for electrical engineers, but for artists just dipping their toes into electronics, even for the first time.)

# Cell Phone Disco – Cell Phone Disco is a surface that visualizes the electromagnetic field of an active mobile phone.

Several thousand lights illuminate when you make or recieve a phone call in the vicinity of the installation. Cell Phone Disco makes an invisible property of the environment perceptible to our senses. It reveals the communicating body of the mobile phone.

# Machinecollective.org public beta – full launch soon – Machinecollective is about physical computing, hardware prototyping, (remote) personal manufacturing, human/machine interaction and control surface development. Machinecollective is you, me and the machines, connected through this online community. Machinecollective is a public experiment, with community driven open source hardware as a foundation for further exploration and development.

# DS-10 US Preorder Available; US Ship Date 9/30 – Korg’s DS-10, a synth for your Nintendo DS handheld, is now available for preorder in the US from amazon.com.

Some interesting things I found on May 16th, 2008:

# Speaker Synth – A five-speaker array with no external audio input, created by Lesley Flanigan. The only components in the system are the instrument's speakers, piezoelectric microphones, amplifying circuits, and the hands of the performer.

Lesley Flanigan with Speaker Synth in performance at Monkey Town, New York City, January 2008

From the project page:

Speaker Synth is played by positioning individual piezo microphones with their corresponding speakers and manipulating their associated on/off and volume controls to induce a variation of feedback effects. During the performance, samples from both Speaker Synth and a vocalist are captured and sequenced to build a dense sonic pallet of rhythms and melodies. The performance explores music making through structuring noise, highlighting relationships between analog and digital sound synthesis and between human voice and the voice of an instrument.

Check Lesley’s website for audio and video performances and more cool projects.

# Tonefloat – A bit of a mutant mobile milkbottle xylophone. Each bottle has a small electrical hammer behind it, which is 'played' by a midi keyboard or drum machine, and a few strings of wire 'n chips.

# Plague Bearer – designed to infect, corrupt and pervert a signal beyond recognition. It contains four Voltage-Controlled Resonant Bandpass filters that were designed with the goals of maximum signal alteration and maximum parameter controllability.

# Steppers – Steppers were designed to get kids up on their feet, moving, and playing with sound and music. An external sensor sandal is worn over a child’s shoes, noting each footstep, and, in real time, playing back sound effects/music to compliment their movement.

# MIDI Glockenspiel – Using an Arduino make a computer controller MIDI Glockenspiel.

# Mozart from Scrap-Made Mechanical Glockenspiel – A weight-driven automatic glockenspiel made from assorted recovered materials.

# Toriton plus prototype: first look – A more complex version of the Toriton musical instrument. It involves using five lasers instead of just the one.

Some interesting things I bookmarked on del.icio.us on February 7th, 2008:

• Musicthatmakesyoudumb – Correlation of musical tastes and SAT scores. Duh!
• cbbrakedrum – The BrakeDrum is an attempt at making a drum pad system based on circuit bend toys. It consists of 4 drum pads with piezo elements in them and a box with 5 bend toys, 4 almost identical steering wheel toys and a small beat box toy.

MikMo’s BrakeDrum

• Question Mark Album – Timothy Preut (t1mp) delivers another great album. Free download, check it out! (make sure you check Soulphonic as well…)
• Pre-owned bookmarks – Collected over the years from books purchased at flea markets, garage sales, used bookstores, etc.
• DIY Harmonica Mic 3 – Harmonica mic made from scrounged pieces of other items.