Week Eight

WEEK EIGHT

         During week eight, we continued working on programming the Arduino with other devices. We continued developing the processing code as well as the Arduino IDE code. Last week, we successfully controlled the intensity of the lighting through a laptop's track pad, using both the processing and Arduino IDE programs. As a continuation from last week, we were successful in changing the color of lighting through the use of a laptop's track pad. 
         
         This has led us into the next part of the module where we translate the processing of MIDI and correlate that to the intensity as well as the color of the lighting. Thus, we have started writing up the code for this process while working hand in hand with other useful programs such as LoopBe 30 and Reaper (these were lightly discussed in week seven). And as usual, Arduino IDE is used to contact the breadboard and Processing will be used to communicate between programs.

Intended Circuitry Design

                Above is a picture of the simplest circuitry design we have chosen as a preliminary method of displaying the individual notes in different colors. In this example there will be seven rows of LED's which are connected in parallel. Each row will be an individual circuit powered by a single PWM pin on the Arduino. From each pin, the wire will be split into three leads, passing through three different parallel resistors. With this design, the ratio of current going through each of the three LED cathodes will be constant. With carefully chosen resistors the color of each LED will be predetermined and the voltage coming from the PWM source will fluctuate according to the velocity recorded by the MIDI keyboard.

         

        The primary objective for week eight is to get the midi keyboard to output data which will be used to change the color of the LED lights. However, the team has had difficulties in getting processing to link the Digital Audio Workstation to the Arduino IDE to print out the midi inputs.