Final Interface Lab Project
For my final project in Interface Lab, I wanted to take my input/output project another step further to accomplish a few things that I didn’t get to.
Get a second controller
Get both controllers off the breadboard
Program notes/effects using MIDI/Ableton
Explore what fabrication for a project that involves wires, sensors, etc. looks like and if there’s a practice I want to experience before making a project that is more than a prototype.
Ultimately, what I landed on doing was getting a device together that would allow two people to control sounds separately, but make something that sounded good together. I wanted the sounds to feel a little random and spacey so I could use it for my D4C project. I like the metaphor of astronauts in space talking to humans on Earth and the delay in those conversations.
The first step I took was to understand a little bit of how MIDI/Ableton worked, so I started off by getting away from sending tones to a speaker on the breadboard (first image) to programming notes to Ableton on my laptop. This breadboard has both the controllers and the “hub” which has the Arduino on it.
The next step was to get the controllers off the hub and onto their own boards, and to duplicate the controllers by at least 1 (my original goal was three but time permitted two in the end). Each board had it’s own tone combination and effects potentiometer.
For this step in the process, I used four breadboards, 1 for each component of the system, and I had some concerns about the boards being a little too bulky, since I also wanted to fabricate some sort of housing for each component separately. I was introduced to a board outside of the casing which I could solder directly onto. So I started laying out the plans of how I wanted to get this done, since the “programming” part of the process was essentially complete. Here’s a really short video of a terrible sound being made with controllers and Ableton using MIDI.
I started planning out the fabrication process, which is actually my favorite process because I get to sketch a lot and think of cool ways to plan out the “feel” of the project and it’s initial introduction to a person. I really appreciate things that are just cool to look at so I had some high hopes (that got crushed) but I liked the experience anyways. Below are some images of transferring from breadboard to soldering board, and a really rough way of how the buttons could be laid out on the physical part that people interact with, and how that relates to the circuit layout underneath. I actually had a lot of fun finding buttons and knobs and different materials/sensors that were available. I think I had a few ideas for future projects as well as ideas for making the physical components and parts for these kinds of projects for makers more attractive. I was really interested in this older components kit from Braun: https://blog.adafruit.com/2011/12/07/timeless-beautiful-industrial-design-by-braun-gmbh/
Below are some sketches….I have been told that I might stay in sketch mode for too long, which is a fair assessment. But sketches are a perfect representation of ideas; I consider the sketch a perfect space in between idea and reality, so I like being there.
But everything has to be forced into reality at some point, so I began prototyping the final design. So, I immediately ran into a small issue in which most of my fabrication work happens in a place where there is a table saw because I lean heavily on dado cuts to make seamless quick boxes. The main mode of building there is a “cut” with laser cutting machines. So I had to rework my strategy for build almost immediately into joints. Laser cutters are not my favorite fabrication tool for making 3D things, I feel like they are amazing for cutting intricacies but not so much for things like casing or boxes. The joints tend to break on thinner materials that work well in laser cutters too, like 1/8 inch or 1/4 inch acrylics and pulp wood, etc. Thicker wood is terrible to cut with a laser, and double cuts always seem to lose accuracy.
I did paper prototypes initially to look at the proportions of the boxes. The paper one looked a little tall so I made some measuring edits.
Also, I almost started a little fire :D Shout out to Maya for bringing a wet sponge when blowing the fire out actually just made it spread. Quick note, if you’re cutting cardboard or paper closer together and the pieces that fall from it don’t fall through the filter, it just becomes kindling.
So, next up was the completed cardboard prototype. At this point, I’m feeling really good because I have my boards laid out, I have wire twisted and labeled, my programming still works, and my cardboard prototype is feeling really successful, so my only next steps were to solder, laser cut with acrylic, and assemble.
As a side note, while I was doing this fabrication, I also had a side prototype just for programming purposes. Below you can see I took an extra breadboard and left it as two separate circuits so functionally it is exactly the same as my final set up. I would poke at the programming every once in while to make any adjustments or edits I wanted to make.
So, I had some pretty big dreams after seeing the first cutout of the acrylic case for one of the controllers. It made a neat little box and I really liked the look of the green circuit board and the wires in the clear acrylic. So, my goal was to make 2 clear cases and a wooden box to hold a bluetooth speaker and the hub along with hiding some of the wires. The reason for the bluetooth speaker was to get the users to not look at the computer, and instead believe that the entire system worked through the two controllers and the “speaker box.” I did pretty well with the two controllers cut out….but I did NOT succeed in getting the wooden box. The laser cutter just did not want to make a clean cut through the wood I had, and I ended up running out of materials.
So here I faced a bit of a challenge: I was against a time crunch, had 2 completed controllers, a cardboard box, no more materials, and I still needed to solder and test everything, at which point, I might have to do some trouble shooting because there was no guarantee that the physical connections would be as good as the breadboard. The acrylic case is really brittle, which means it’s hard to put together and easily breakable, and pretty finicky, so getting the circuit in and out of the case would be tricky. I decided to just assemble one clear case as proof of concept, and leave the other controller and hub in cardboard prototype form so I could prioritize the programming and make sure the whole thing actually worked.
You’ll notice I have no images for the soldering portion, because it was very hurried and a bit stressful. I did have a moment where it seemed like the entire thing didn’t work because I was missing a strong connection between one of the buttons and ground, and I had to test the voltage coming through every single connection on both boards. I think the dumbest decision I made in this whole thing was to be obsessive about the cleanliness of wires.
I also got a lot of help in figuring out some of the more detailed parts of Ableton…which are documented in screenshots below:
I also tried to keep an organized board of things I would refer to a lot like which pins went with which board, etc. and I was recommended this chart that shows combinations and pairings of notes.
So finally, I didn’t get the result I wanted, I think fabrication wise it still has a lot of work that it needs, but I think I accomplished all my goals. Below is the result!
And a video.
It’s over, yay! I think it would be cool to really design a great hub and controllers, and make like, at least 10 controllers. My hope for future iterations is to make the controllers wireless and have speakers set up all around a room so as you play music, you have to “find” yourself and your speaker in that space.
