Joysticks, Distances & Accelerometers
This week consisted of two main themes: feeling incredibly overwhelmed with the big picture of my thesis and wondering how in hell I’m going to actually reach my goals, contrasted with intense productivity that has gotten me over these lows and have added much more flame to the fire of finishing this odd assortment of microcontrollers and effects pedals.
Feeling trapped under the weight of producing and finalizing a thesis project seems to be an ongoing trend within our community, it’s something I have felt especially a lot about a week ago. Being this deep in a field that is relatively unknown to myself has terrified me on more than one occasion but I found it has been increasingly important when facing some of these issues to just take a step back and recollect. Pushing yourself too hard only leads to burning oneself out.
Big Picture Update
I have finally established which sensors and techniques I’m going to implement for my final demonstration:
I’m going to use a distance sensor to manipulate values on a tremolo pedal, the closer one puts their hand to the sensor, the faster the rate of the effect’s wave, the further it gets, the slower the rate. This will allow people that are walking through the showcase to directly interact with the sound going from my guitar to the amplifier.
For the delay pedal, I will use a joystick to control both the echo’s rate and the feedback amount. By moving the joystick left or right, the user will either add to or subtract from the echo’s rate. By moving the stick up or down, the user will either add to or subtract from the amount of feedback the pedal outputs. Another simple interaction between viewers of the demonstration and my sound.
Finally, I’m going to use an accelerometer to manipulate resistance values to a distortion pedal. Similar to the game Guitar Hero, as I pivot my guitar to an upward position, there will be incremental additions to the amount of distortion being outputted. As well, I’m going to place blue LEDs within the neck of the guitar I will be playing that will light up with respect to the amount of distortion the circuit is outputting.
More Progress
Earlier last week, I got a MCP42010 (14 pin chip) to communicate to two potentiometers on one pedal using a single Arduino nano — big success for sure (this technique will be utilized with my distortion pedal setup). But when trying to send mapped values using my joystick sensor to the delay pedal, I wasn’t getting the full range of resistance possible for the rate of the echo. After some troubleshooting, I found that the MCP41100 (8 pin chip) was able to reach the full resistance range possible with the factory potentiometer for the pedal. Only issue — I now need two Arduinos (there’s not enough pins on one Arduino nano to accommodate both chips) to communicate through their serial ports to then send correct values to the delay pedal, one sending values to the feedback potentiometer leads and the other to the potentiometer controlling the rate of the echo.
I also began the finalization of the circuits — I am straying away from the prototyping / breadboarding stage and am currently soldering the circuits in place using solderable PCB breadboards. I plan on finishing up the circuits for both the distortion pedal and delay pedal within the next weeks so I can put an end to the circuitry phase and move on to polishing the code and fabricating the enclosure itself.
Much work to do, but I look forward to this project’s imminent conclusion.
