Sorry I Haven't Been Posting, Let Me Recap...

This past week has gone by like a blur. I have not been posting as much as I should because I have been getting adjusted to living in a new place, adjusting to the new job, and I went home this weekend to pick up the last of the stuff for my new apartment. I plan to be posting much more regularly now that I feel adjusted to all of the new stuff.

This past week was a lot of work on the MMCB. The design has been re-engineered to make it more compatible with the technology and more cost effective, the programming has been created and is in the process of completion, and the process is starting to enter its final stages.

The design of the board has changed drastically. Instead of the 21 triggers, one for each inverted chord, the MMCB has been reconfigured to 9 triggers: one for each chord and two buttons that change the inversion. This simplifies the box as well as stays within the restrictions of the number of Arduino ports (I originally thought that there were 21 usable ports; in reality there are only 18 usable).

Here is the design:

Each of the triggers is a thumbtack. The "Play!" button is a penny that serves as a ground for the MaKey MaKey. The first and second inversions are accessed by holding down the inversion first, holding down the root second, and then pressing the "Play!" button. The device is built into the box that the MaKey MaKey comes in and the overlay is just paper held down by the tacks.

The Arduino wires have been stripped at one end to allow the internal copper wire to be looped around the thumbtacks. The tape holds them to the top of the box. The MaKey MaKey is held into the box by a rubber band that is looped through the ground holes and the box. The USB port is connected through a small hole in the box.

As you can see, the device is actually finished! We created multiple paper prototypes and when we came up with this design, we decided that this would be the real prototype. We assembled the box and also assembled the programming.

The group decided that recording all of the sounds live would be superior to using the pitches accessible through our software of choice, Scratch. We recorded the chromatic scale in over three octaves in order to get all of the pitches necessary for a database to create chords. We recorded voice, piano, electric and acoustic guitar, and marimba to ensure that students who are used to hearing a specific instrument can work better. From there, we grouped together all of the diatonic chords in the key of C major to be used in our programming.

After creating many skeletons of programming in Scratch, this is what the programming turned out to be:

One subset

The entire subset for one instrument

Now that this is all done, we can move on to developing a presentation about what the applications are, how it can be improved, and cost effectiveness (under $65!). Wish us luck!