A show that makes noise
These days, our screens are totally silent, as even the faint coil whine from cathode ray tube televisions was changed by LCD and OLED shows a pair many years in the past. After receiving a pair of AlphaZeta flip shows as a present in 2021, Hannah Robertson put them on a shelf and confirmed information that one would count on to see, together with temperature, climate, and the date. And since then, Robertson seen how the variety of dots altering concurrently impacts the sound profile produced by the shows: one dot/phase makes a mushy click on whereas many dots/segments create a loud whirring/clacking noise, respectively.
Discovering the proper music
Based mostly on this intriguing sample, Robertson knew that it may be reworked from a purely visible show into one thing that mixes music and clever graphics. The percussive nature of the shifting dots and segments lent itself effectively to a style of music often known as “Clapping Music” whereby two performers progressively change their rhythm to create a shifting, phasing sound that will get extra intense after a number of repetitions.
Displaying sound
Given how this type of music is carried out by simply two folks, Robertson assigned her dot-based show because the unchanging clapper and the segment-based one because the second, shifting clapper. As for the code, the bottom clapping sample is a straightforward sample that determines when the dots/segments ought to flip. When a 1 is encountered, a preset variety of random parts change orientation on the goal show, whereas a 0 skips setting something. And on the finish of every repetition, the segment-based show’s offset is incremented to provide the shift.
Powering all the things is a Raspberry Pi Zero W that has been preconfigured as an AlphaZeta show controller– full with a self-hosted internet interface. As a way to obtain fine-grained management over the matrices, the Pi executes a customized Julia script that runs via a predefined rhythm and outputs the management indicators over serial to the awaiting shows.
One other electro-mechanical challenge?
Because of the success of this challenge, Robertson hopes to hold a number of the classes she discovered into future designs that incorporate electro-mechanical percussion with putting visuals. To see extra about how this flip-dot instrument was created, you may learn its weblog submit right here.