eenie-meenie-miny-arduino.

I've had a request to put a post up explaining a little more about the Arduino technology I used to create my audio-interactive Twister board.

So here we go!

I wanted to create an audio-interactive twister board that played sounds as the different coloured circles were covered. I fell upon the idea of building a board with Light dependent resistors (LDR’s) embedded in the circles. By wiring these LDR’s up to an Arduino I was able to use the LDR’s as on/off switches to play samples using a programme called PureData (PD).

To wire the LDR’s to the board, I had to solder longer wires so that the connectors would reach. I then used a breadboard to build the circuit that would make the link between the LDR’s, the Arduino and the computer. The pins of the LDR’s were inserted into slots in the breadboard; the pins were in series with a resistor and the current then flowed to a jump wire that was inserted into the analog input of the Arduino. The USB connection from the computer to the Arduino meant that the breadboard was powered by 5v. I used the Arduino software, which facilitates the communication of the arduino with the computer, to get numerical readings from the LDR’s. I could then turn these into 'on' switches in PD that played sounds.

Here is my patch....



If an LDR was covered, the numbers would increase and stay constant, so I wrote an algorithm that instructed the computer to play a certain sound if the numbers received were above a certain threshold, depending on the resistance of the LDR and resistor in the circuit (a lower resistance would produce smaller numbers).

Because there were 20 coloured circles on the board I had to use four laptops. The Arduinos only had 5 inputs each, and could only one could be used in a computer at a time. I chose various different sounds, some comical and some everyday household sounds to make the overall experience as fun as possible for the audience.

Big shout out to Alex Davies who is gonna reference this post in his essay!
Alex's blog is... http://zeelasonitus.blogspot.com

check it out yo!