Containerized Particulate

Here’s some footage of a fraction of the final solenoids, working fully. The input in this video is Lives MIDI out; I scrubbed the tempo up to 999 to get the actuators to freak out like that. You can see a bit of the lovely armature that Whit and I rigged up yesterday, as well as the clips that’ll allow the solenoids to be moved around without much fuss. A few things I’ve learned from this setup, so far.

1. Don’t use a switching power supply with solenoids.
2. Don’t tamper with solenoid coils.
3. Tiny plunger = short duty cycle.

preemptive satisfaction from Jared Arave on Vimeo.

Fixed up a friends guitar, and ended up replacing a broken pickup with a little squank generator / distortion unit. Zany!

guitar.repair++ from Jared Arave on Vimeo.

Oh hey, Internet. Long time no see. Sorry I haven’t been keeping in very good touch, but you’ll no doubt be thrilled to learn that I’ve been keeping myself pretty busy, despite appearances to the contrary around here. Right now I’m in the middle of building an Arduino-based robotic percussionist, and I figured it might be handy for myself and (hopefully) others if I aggregated some of the websites I’ve learned from along the way. At the very least it’ll get me back into the habit of posting here. The idea is to construct a self contained hardware unit that takes MIDI input (from a computer, drum machine, whatever), and outputs voltage to a solenoid array. Anyways,

one – Instructibles.com link to a MIDI in Arduino shield. The parts list is handy, though I have no desire to etch my own board for this particular project. Not getting any serial data? Try switching the pins on the input jack. Seriously. Try it.

two – Arduino MIDI library. Obvious, but pay attention; this is an important one. Google “MIDI arduino library” and you’ll get the (in my opinion) inferior “MIDI Library V2″. There’s some useful information hanging around distributions of that library, but I’ve found Willmans MIDI library to be considerably more functional.

three – A stupidly simple schematic for controlling transistor relays with an Arduino. Simple but functional, and the hardware for each relay will only set you back about 75 cents.

Taken together, these three links should be about all you need to get a similar MIDI tapper running. I’ve seen quite a few projects like this out there, and I’m pretty sure this will yield a low cost rig that’s as functional as any. Right now I’m just waiting on some solenoids in the post, but once they arrive, I’ll throw up some video of the assembled product in action, along a less jargony post for those wondering what the hell I’m talking about.