Arduino Theremin

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Revision as of 12:56, 18 November 2009 by Russ hensel (talk | contribs)
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This is a learning experience to use an Arduino to make a version of the Theremin. The Theremin is a musical instrument that is played just by putting your hands near the instrument:

The Theremin normally uses radio waves to detect the position of the hands, we will use light falling on a photo resistor instead, and for now just to pitch and skip loudness.

Approach

It is often good to do a project by breaking it down into steps and make sure that each step works before making the project more complicated. We will do this in two way. We will build the project up a step at a time, and we will when possible "steal" code from other projects and adapt it to ours.

Debugging/Logging Project

It is nice to have a seral port to control a project and have the project report back to you. We have done this in a couple of projects. Lets steal the code from SerialSound2 and save it into a new project called SerialLog1. Modify the code so all it does is recieves the incomming character, add one to it and send it back. Let Mr. H check the code when you think this part is done.

Measure Light Brightness

To start this stage in the project open SerialLog1 and save it as SerialBrightness1. Now in another project ( LDR ) we had a light dependent resistor and blinked some LED's depending on the brightness. Lets steal some of that code and add it to the current one SerialLog1. Modify the code so that when the light goes from on to off the Arduino sends "light off" and when it goes from off to on it sends "light on", and finally the light does not change the Arduino sends nothing.

Let Mr. H check the code when you think this part is done.

Measure Light Brightness Analog