Final Project: Md studios

Final Project concept:

An Interactive drum kit with multiple rooms, each room has a different theme and different drum kit sounds. some of the themes are unusual everyday sounds. I have implemented a regular drum kit, an arabic percussion kit,  a kitchen kit and a sci-fi kit. I wanted to give my users a new experience that they would not be able to get using traditional musical instruments, a small glimpse of the world of electronic music you may say.

Implementation design:

I used 3 force sensors for the drum plates and I used 2 buttons to loop between the themes and go back to home screen. I created screenshots of the themes and added a creative touch to each theme to make it more relevant to the theme.

Interaction between Arduino and P5js:

The only interaction between Arduino and p5js is reading the force sensors and buttons on Arduino and sending it to p5js to change the themes/sounds accordingly. To make my buttons and force sensors work as smooth as possible I have added a delay on reading certain inputs without using the delay() function so that other inputs work simultaneously

Arduino Code:

for the arduino code, I read the values from the sensors and sent them to the p5js through serial.print() by using commas to separate the values. to make the interaction smoother I used “delay without delay()” to ensure that the button is only read every few seconds whereas t

he force sensors are read on a continuous basis.

#define FORCE_SENSOR_PIN1 A0 // the FSR and 10K pulldown are connected to A0
#define FORCE_SENSOR_PIN2 A1 // the FSR and 10K pulldown are connected to A1
#define FORCE_SENSOR_PIN3 A2 // the FSR and 10K pulldown are connected to A2
#define Button1 7 //the switch in connected to D7 (Red button)
#define Button2 6 //the switch in connected to D6 (Yellow button)
#define Button3 5 //the switch in connected to D5 (Blue button)

unsigned long previousMillis = 0;
const long interval = 200; 

void setup() {
  Serial.begin(9600);
}

void loop() {
    unsigned long currentMillis = millis();
    int analogReading1 = analogRead(FORCE_SENSOR_PIN1);
    int analogReading2 = analogRead(FORCE_SENSOR_PIN2);
    int analogReading3 = analogRead(FORCE_SENSOR_PIN3); 
    int digitalReading1 = 1;
    int digitalReading2 = digitalRead(Button2);

    if (currentMillis - previousMillis >= interval) {
    // save the last time you read from the button
      previousMillis = currentMillis;
      digitalReading1 = digitalRead(Button1);
    }
    // print the raw analog readings seperated by commas

    Serial.print(analogReading1); //read without delay
    Serial.print(",");
    Serial.print(analogReading2); //read without delay
    Serial.print(",");
    Serial.print(analogReading3); //read without delay
    Serial.print(",");    
    Serial.print(digitalReading1); //read with delay!!!!!!
    Serial.print(",");    
    Serial.print(digitalReading2); // read without delay
    Serial.println();

}

p5js:

for my p5js code, I read the values from Arduino and split them at the comma and stored each value in a variable that I later used to create conditions on to make sure that the right sounds and the right themes are displayed depending on the user’s inputs.

The aspects of the project I am proud of: 

I am proud that I managed to create the force sensors responsive to the touch so that the sounds are played right when the user presses on the force sensor, to make it smooth. I am also proud of the the

me designs I created, I put in extra thought to make sure the user can understand what the theme is without having to explain it.

Pictures of my project:

first prototype:

Final Version:

Future improvements:

I initially wanted to create a record button that records users’ jams and adds them all to one file to have a collective file of many users’ artistic touch, but the p5js sound. library was not working as expected and was causing so many bugs in my program so I decided to skip it for now, but I would love to add later on because I believe it makes the project much more interesting.

Sources:

https://soundpacks.com/free-sound-packs/sci-fi-sound-fx-pack/

https://www.reddit.com/r/edmproduction/comments/3lh4t0/free_kitchen_sounds_sample_pack/

https://docs.arduino.cc/built-in-examples/digital/BlinkWithoutDelay

https://www.clipartmax.com/