Engineering Projects/Music projects/Howard Community College/spring2012/p1501KP

Problem Statement
To construct a BeatBearing musical sequencer.

Team Members

 * Patrick Marsden
 * Kyle Gallun

Summary
Our group began with the Beatbearing design in mind. We continued another group's work with the Arduino and programming. Once we had the Arduino communicating with the synthesizer, we began wiring and creating the board for the Beatbearing. We designed the board on Pro Engineer and planned to use a CNC machine to create the board out of plexiglass.

Story
Week 1 - in week one we determined what kind of music project we wanted to do so we made a decision list weighing the pros and cons of each one.

Week 2 - in week two we worked on constructing the midi shield for the Arduino. after doing that we learner how to control the keyboard with the Arduino.

Week 3 - in week 3 we begun to draw a CAD model of the board and collecting materials for the circuit.

Week 4 - The CAD model on the board was finalized and construction on the circuit began. Kyle's Work Weeks 1 through 4.

Decision List
After looking at pros and cons we decided to go with the beat bearing maker.

Material List

 * 3 Ribbon Cables
 * 32 Washers 7/8 (Outer Diameter) x 3/8 (Inner Diameter)
 * MIDI Shield and assembly components
 * Arduino UNO
 * Computer (to use Ardunio software)
 * Plexiglass board 15 x 7
 * MIDI Cable
 * Synthesizer (with MIDI input and output)
 * Soldering Iron
 * 63/37 Solder
 * The masterful minds of Pat M and Kyle G

Software List

 * Arduino software to hack the synthesizer. Also used for programming and processing our incoming data from the beatbearing. The program is similar to C++.


 * Pro Engineer is a CAD modeling software that we used to create a schematic for the beatbearing board.

Time
32.34 Hours Spent

Tutorials
How to: Solder MIDI Shield Components

How to solder ribbon cable to washer

cutting washers in half

Next Steps
Complete wiring and fabrication of the board. Program Arduino to interpret data from the board (the bearings and washers creating an electrical signal). Hack synthesizer to have multiple sound settings in separate regions of the keyboard.

Current problems include not having a CNC machine to carve the plexiglass board and not having wired the circuitry together. Both of these problems have prevented the realization of the concept.