Making Noise With Arduino
We had a hardware night in Makers last week. A lot of us had looked into Raspberry Pis and various arduino kits but few had much of a clue how to get started. This was a night where everyone could bring in their kit and we’d try to help each other make something.
This is the kit I bought. It seemed to do the job quite well.
I learned lots through the generosity of my fellow Makers in sharing their hardware knowledge with me.
I’m not handy in a physical way. I can google anything and fix most computery problems. Physical things, not so much. I did pretty well at school except at Woodwork where I got a C- for my truly terrible pencil holder.
I never took apart the toaster, I didn’t even remember getting all that into lego.
None of this matters. The only difference between you and someone who plays with hardware is buying some hardware to play with.
There is no pre-requisites for getting yourself an arduino kit. No-one needs to see your true nerd badge. This is what’s so great about this stuff. You just buy it plug it in, figure stuff out, ask for help.
Making a buzzer buzz by waving my hand in front of sensor was one of the highlights of my programming career thus far. We made a pretty rubbish theremin so the pitch of the buzz shifted based on proximity to the sensor. Look forward to making some kind of air keyboard a la Jean-Michelle Jarre.
Anyway besides getting passed a lot of my own insecurities as you can see above I also made a sort of theremin.
It used an arduino, a breadboard, a bunch of wires, a piezo buzzer and a sonar sensor.
I based the design on a sensor alarm here and then hacked around.
The arduino software could not be more welcoming but do try to find someone to help out or it may get a little frustrating on your own. It is by no means impossible though so don’t let not having support on hand stop you.
This is part of my daily blog series while I attend Makers Academy coding bootcamp. If you’d like to read more you can find them here.
Makers Academy Week9 Day7
