Project Brief:
Create a music-making system using Arduino to connect triggers and controls. Three main requirements for the project were to create a physical interface, a software program that integrates our interface, and finally visuals to accompany the music. The project was completed in one week.
Role:
Physical Prototype, Visual Design, Documentation
Year:
Fall 2022
Project Team:
Chrissy Stevens, Natsumi Takagi, and Audra Walker
Concept
A furry cat themed music box. Our physical interface uses two buttons and a potentiometer placed on each of the cat’s ears. An additional button is located on the cats belly. The buttons trigger a random happy or angry cat sound while the potentiometer controls the speed of the looping background beat.
Process
We started our exploration by sketching out what our cat themed music box would look like and where we would place the different controls. We went with a geometric style for the cat shape to simplify the interface build.
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Hardware:
We used two different inputs with buttons to control the happy and mad cat sounds. A final input was used to change the speed of the looping hip hop beat.
Look and Feel:
We used Dalle-2, Photoshop, and processing to create an accompanying visual of our resident cat DJ. Each time a button is pressed the cat’s paw appears on the record vinyl. Lastly we used a multicolored fur for the music box to add a bright interesting texture to our music box.
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Audio:
The audio was inspired by a looping hip hop beat and different cat noises.
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Arduino and Processing Code
