Make Bournemouth

For a while I have been part of local group Make Bournemouth which is a great forum for exploring cool stuff such as 3D printing, hacking toys, making new instruments, and making little electronics gadgets. The next session is something I am really into at the mo, making an instrument with Arduino using the excellent Arduino library from Mozzi. Turning the Arduino into a stand alone instrument for cheaps and easily!

Hackathon @ NIME 2014!

Recently I spent the day at the hackathon at Goldsmiths University in London as part of the New Instruments for Musical Expression (NIME) conference. The hackathon had the theme of accesibility and breaking down barriers to participation for musicians with disabilities. It was great to have some good feedbackon my SenseEgg project as well as to see the fantastic blend of skills that were on show throughout the day. Some great collaborating going on which was really inspiring.

Arduino based music hacks :)

Some fun projects made with Arduino!!!

http://www.hackthings.com/rock-out-with-arduino-music-related-hacks/

Arduino based button box adventures

So my aim is to make an Arduino based button box with 30 momentary buttons that communicate serially via USB into Max. Here are some photos of my efforts thus far.

I am using an Arduino Mega clone by Funduino and lots of buttons from lots of places.

The moving from breadboard to stripboard.

The button box in construction mode.

 The abomination of a breadboard figuring out the wiring for 10 buttons.

The first 11 buttons worth of wires, plus the next 11's resistors. Already a bit of a crazed scramble!

Testing the first 10 buttons with success!!!!

All buttons tested well so that was nice.

Marking out the project box purchased from Maplin.

 Drilling mini holes for the bigger holes.

 Lots of buttons.

 Getting a better drill with actual round drill bits.

With a little help from the boy.

 Fitting the buttons. Inside view.

Buttons fitted from the outside.

After much soldering, resoldering, gluegunning, pin headering, code checking, resoldering, rewiring, and heqad bashing.....IT'S FINISHED!

 Just a bit of cosmetic tidying to do plus any remending as and when it breaks. :)

 30 momentary buttons running via a Funduino Mega into arduino each giving a discrete serial number which are mapped to the numbers 0-10 plus a few letters from the alphabets!