Exercise 1: Imporve the Musical Instrument

Transcript

Such lovely sounds, ah! Now it reacts to my hand but I wonder if there's some other technique to play this instrument. You could make music with all kinds of shadows and lights. Plug the battery to the board and carry the instrument around to explore your surroundings. You can find bright, blinking lights that create nice sounds. You can even make a light or shadow phenomenon audible. How does a sunset or moonlight sound like? Or sunshine reflecting from a pool of water? If you find curious moving shadow patterns, you can create rhythms, too. How about playing music with a fidget spinner? Remember, you can always use extension wires to move the components to better spots if you want to build a casing for the instrument. If the LDR is picking up unwanted light or shadow, consider putting it into a tube or a funnel to control the signals it's picking up. Oh, and don't forget the potentiometer, either. You can improve the interface and attach something to the shaft. A toy, a steering wheel. You've already tested a few programming tricks, too. Continue fine-tuning the code so your shadow and light experiments produce the maximal impact. Work with the ranges of the map command, change the condition in the if statement or make more if statements to fire up new features. The most important thing: keep it pretty simple at this point. It doesn't have to be perfect right away. And you can always continue with this project later on.

Do this

Create a new, unique way to play the Arduino instrument!

Use the instrument you made earlier in this chapter
Look for interesting shadow patterns or blinking lights. Use them to make rhythms and sounds!
How can you tweak the code to create better sounds?
Do you want to experiment and build the instrument with craft materials? Or do you want to instead concentrate on the code? You choose!

Tips:

Plug in a battery to the board so you can move the instrument around.
Clear shadows and sharp light (like the mobile phone's LED flashlight) are easy to make sounds with.
About 15-20 minutes should be enough to complete this project - don't make a super complicated instrument! You can always continue this project later on!

Programming tricks:

Work with the if statement: check the serial monitor to find the best threshold values
Work with the ranges in the map command
Spice up the sounds with a bit of randomness! For example:

random(min, max) creates a random number between given minimum and maximum values. It's a useful command!

Note: Be careful with parentheses - it's not a typo, you really need two closing parentheses )) in the end of the command.

You can use random with the map command, too (or anywhere where you have numbers):

You can also try to...

...change the note range with the map command (last two parameters)
...use potVal as one of the parameters of the map command
...use potVal as the second or third parameter of the tone command
...change the "smaller than" symbol ( < ) into the "greater than" symbol ( > ) in the if statement
...use ldrVal as the parameter for delay

Educator notes

Once again, the most important aspect of this exercise is not the outcome itself, but rather, letting the students experience different ways to create interaction and to use their surroundings as material.

It is sometimes tough to apply what you’ve learned when you’re still learning the basics - but it’s definitely not impossible! Moments of experimentation provide even beginners a chance to plant seeds for new ideas, those which may take a while to blossom. Free-form, relaxed activities are sometimes needed to keep the motivation up.

A great way to start this exercise is an observational walk.

When coding intensively, a break is sometimes needed anyway. Why not take a walk for 10 minutes or so, inside or outside, making observations of interesting shadow and light patterns? Be sure to take photos to document those observations - it’s useful later on.
If it’s tricky to use the actual observations when playing the Arduino instrument, replicate the phenomena with objects, crafts materials and light sources.

Note - For example, mobile phones have excellent flash lights, which are great for creating very sharp shadows!