Electronic Prototype

Fortunately we have managed to make a lot of progress in the last few days. After a bit of help from our lecturer, we have wrote the PICAXE coding that gives the exact electronic effect that we had hoped for our device. This means when a switch is activated it only plays the sample when in contact and stops when disconnected. Due to this development we were able to quick construct this Electronic Prototype (above) that will hopefully give everyone a fair impression of our aims for the dj cubes. The prototype is basically using most of the technology we will be using for our final product except this has no tilt switches or cubes.

Also, here's a link to a video of the prototype in use

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ex1nExac-1A

Samples done

After trying lots of different methods that were not working or were not worth the effort I finally got some samples made for our sample cubes. After finally working out how to do it, I've made three sets of three samples, all are around 120bpm and all are very housey sounding. The process of creating them was quite long but I soon got into the routine of it.

Samples where made mostly on GarageBand (I would rather have used Reason but I can't afford it). After selecting the tempo and noise of the sample I then turned it into a loop and used converting software to turn it into WAV format. Next I used Audacity to make slight tempo and length adjustments to each sample so that they would all match and loop perfectly. Each set of three samples consists of a bassline loop, a beat loop and a melody loop. Each set of samples can be mixed smoothly with all the other samples I've created

I've been playing around with our new samples on our Puredata patch using only Puredata (no hardware or PICAXE). The samples seem to be working perfectly and should go very well with or cubes.

A new concept

After our extremely beneficial visit from FOUND and King Creosote we had our idea ripped away from us and replaced with something far better which Robbie and I have refined and started work on. Here's a brief explanation of our new concept.....

The hardware consists of four wooden cubes which we have almost finished constructing. Inside each cube will be a tilt switch. This will be used to activate a sample assigned to each cube. The tilt switches will be wired to our microcontroller and then to the mac. The software running on the computer will be PICAXE which will be triggering the sample on Puredata. So basically, turn the cubes to triggered looping samples.

So far we have almost built cubes and our Puredate coding. The coding was sent to us by Paul, an Interactive Media Design graduate who is very experienced with Max/MSP. As far as we are aware it is about 6 panels on which samples can be loaded and triggered by the activation of buttons. We will probably need to make small tweaks so it is more compatible with our device.

Here's what we need to do; finish our four cubes; receive our tilt switches and cables which we have just ordered; wire them up; write our PICAXE coding so that it will trigger samples on Puredata when signals are received from the tilt switches; and finally I will start making samples for our cubes to play.

Our helpful visitors

A couple of days ago we had a some visitors to our studio to share some knowledge and give some tips. Two members from the Fife band FOUND of Fence Records and founder of Fence Records, King Creosote, were our helpful visitors.

After a lecture and Q&A session with FOUND, where they told us many useful pieces of info and shared lots of stories with us about the creation of Cybraphon (search it, it's amazing!), we got down to work on our devices as our vistors walked round each of the groups in our studio examining the projects and sharing their opinions. They seemed to be quite impressed with everyones work so far but also had lots of tips to give, which isn't a bad thing.

After speaking to two of the members of FOUND and King Creosote, Robbie and I had our whole concept completely ripped apart, chewed up and spat out, only to be left feeling extremely inspired and ready for some real work. The only problem was sorting out all of our new ideas and hopes for our sound device. I'll post again in a couple of days with when we have refined our brand new concept........intense.

Problems, problems, problems.....

As I said in our technical prototype post, i would follow up on the button problem. The buttons where not working as we would like, technically or electronically. For certain functions of our sound device to work we needed two buttons to be pressed at the same time. It seemed quite difficult to press them at the same time and also the software was having problems with recognising it.

To solve this we decided we would incorporate reed switches and magnets into the cubes. This meant that when the reed switch in one box came close to the magnet of another box, the sample or sound would be triggered. So we got our reed switches ordered, received and rigged up in a way to test this. It seemed to be working slightly better than the buttons at first glance but then we realised an even bigger problem.

Our new worry was that when the reed switches and magnets were in contact, instead of being recognised by the software (picaxe and puredata) once, it was being recognised about 10 times a second. This meant that, whenever we got out samples created, they would be starting and stopping 10 times a second!

Obviously we still have a lot of work to do....

Inspiration

This is just a quick post to drop some links that we found inspirational towards our progress on our device.

We do not hope for our device to be any where near as impressive as these. But have a look anyway.

Reactable 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0h-RhyopUmc

Reactable 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPG-LYoW27E&feature=related

Nike Music Shoe http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uS1exujG3cY&feature=player_embedded

Let me know if anyone else finds any cool sound devices.

Technical Prototype

The software combination of picAXE and Pure Data is not an enjoyable one, certainly not at this point. We have it all set up and developed to a suitable stage at this point, but it seems every time the software is left unused for a couple of days it falls out with us and refuses to cooperate. Luckily, cardboard doesn't get moody so our prototype could be mocked up relatively quickly. With the prototype finished, problems of the buttons not working correctly and software problems in recognising 2 buttons operating at once became apparent. To solve these problems, the buttons are going to be replaced with a reed switch and magnet combination. More on this in the future.

The aesthetics of the boxes are now being thought about in more depth than before. We have decided to design the main control boxes to represent the type of music they will be programmed to play, i.e Hip Hop will involve a lot of gold and bling, Electro will involve bright colours and lights. Designing the boxes around certain music genres will create an added depth for the user and an element of intuition into using the product.