November 26th Update

Today the team met and worked on taking apart an old Gameboy Advanced SP to retrieve the speaker hidden inside it! Unfortunately Nintendo felt the need to put tri-wing screws in the product and rather than spending money to get a tri-wing screwdriver, we decided to have a little fun. The pictures below show a few steps that we went through today, but in the end, the speaker was taken out safely!

Its an odd looking speaker but hopefully it will be sufficient enough for the design. The next step is to finish the code for the keyboard. Wish us luck!

November 20th Update

The group met again today to discuss our project further. We found a speaker that we can use but will not have access to it for a few more days. We will post a picture of the speaker when we get it! But, we also discussed how we wanted to go about coding our piano keyboard. We found a code that we can utilize to get us started but we will be making slight changes so it fits our desired final design better! The group is planning on meeting again when we gain access to the speaker and look forward to finally putting our design planning into action!

We are planning on our final design to look something along the lines of this setup!

November 10th Design Update

The team met today again for the second time to discuss more about our paper piano design. We assigned different responsibilities for each member for each step of the way. As of now, we are currently looking for a possible speaker that we can use for our final design. Our group hopes to find something small, effective, but with minor cost so we are going to scavenge our houses for a possible speaker.

 

 

Paper Piano

Welcome to our Project Blog for Mechanical Design Lab 1!

 

Team Members:

 

 

Colby Sedlier

Ross Wholley

(Not Pictured: Chinkrisna Rath)

 

 

The overarching goal of this project is to grasp a better understanding of how to use Arduino with a "hands on" experience. It will allow our group to work collaboratively with the end result being something that we created ourselves rather than just being handed or buying something.

 

As a group, we plan on creating a paper piano that will function as a typical piano. It will allow a user to simply "tap" the paper "keys", and in return, produce a sound either coming from an attached speaker or another device. We plan on utilizing the conductivity of the graphite from a pencil to transmit the electrical signals to the Arduino and in effect, produce a sound due to a programmed code. We may decide to also incorporate LED lights that correspond directly to a single note or key however, at this time, this decision has still not been made final.

 

 

The following video is similar to how our final Arduino project will function and similar to what it may look like.

 

This video helps show and explain how the paper piano will be made as the graphite from the pencil will act as a conductor for electricity to send signal through the attached wires.