So sticking with the winder as a starting point I’ve collected together some of the components and internal fixings…

I supply..

The acrylic top plate with 12 orange 3mm LEDs and a rotary encoder glued in and wired up (all but the encoder button are soldered) – the one quirk being that I got the blue and purple strands of the ribbon cable out of order… so with the panel face up and micro usb breakout board etching at the bottom the LED configuration is:

12 o’clock – white – anode – MAX7221 22 SegDP/white – common cathode – MAX7221 2 Dig0
1 o’clock – grey – anode – MAX7221 14 SegA/white – common cathode – MAX7221 2 Dig0
2 o’clock – blue – anode – MAX7221 16 SegB/white – common cathode – MAX7221 2 Dig0
3 o’clock – purple – anode – MAX7221 20 SegC/white – common cathode – MAX7221 2 Dig0
4 o’clock – green – anode – MAX7221 23 SegD/white – common cathode – MAX7221 2 Dig0
5 o’clock – yellow – anode – MAX7221 21 SegE/white – common cathode – MAX7221 2 Dig0
6 o’clock – orange – anode – MAX7221 15 SegF/white – common cathode – MAX7221 2 Dig0
7 o’clock – red – anode – MAX7221 17 SegG/white – common cathode – MAX7221 2 Dig0
8 o’clock – white extension – anode – MAX7221 22 SegDP/grey – common cathode – MAX7221 11 Dig1
9 o’clock – grey extension – anode – MAX7221 14 SegA/grey – common cathode – MAX7221 11 Dig1
10 o’clock – blue extension – anode – MAX7221 16 SegB/grey – common cathode – MAX7221 11 Dig1
11 o’clock – purple extension – anode – MAX7221 20 SegC/grey – common cathode – MAX7221 11 Dig1

(more…)

Just to recap – there are 5 units

• rotary sequencer – Arduino Mega 2010 + Adafruit Motor shield – I2C master
• sound module – Fluxamasynth rev1.0 – I2C slave (this to check)
• winder – Arduino Duemilanove – I2C slave
• ballerina praxinoscope – via Adafruit Motor shield
• battery

I’ll start with the ‘Winder’

Three main elements here for integration into a protoshield to sit on a DFRobot.com Arduino Duemilanove clone… :

1. driving 12 orange 3mm LEDs – MV7744 – via a MAX7221 and the LedControl-library – or ideally a TLC5940 if you can get it to work with an I2C bus
2. rotary encoder
3. I2C

(more…)

Although electronics is not really my strong point, I spent some time working through the spec sheets for all the various components in the Modular Music Box in an attempt to work out total power consumption – to give a better idea of the battery mAh rating we’d need and some idea of how long they’d last…

Things have changed since this early list and I’m sure I haven’t taken everything into account – the LVBoost now in the battery pack is probably only running at ~60% efficiency for a start – but here’s my initial working out for the record…
(more…)

First stage planning for fabrication, electrical components, Arduino code and general thoughts for the various modules of the Modular Music Box.

Rotary Magnetic Sequencer

mounting

• walnut box – sides + base – (same dimensions as monome?)
• subtle Art Nouvea/William Morris style laser etching embellishment?
• top panel – Alupanel® aluminium composite (can this be cut on the Fablab laser cutter? – NO)/translucent acrylic
• playback head – to hold 12 x hall effect sensors, 12 x 10k(?) resistors, 12 x 3mm orange LEDs, 12 x 150 Ohm resistors – double check resistor value for multiple LEDs in parallel – cabling
• melody disks – 64 step – 12 x 3mm x 1mm disk magnets per step – 3 layers of 1mm clear acrylic – edge clips to fold three layers together? have Illustrator prototype template

(more…)