Conventional music idea and sheet music notation actually solely resonate with one particular form of thoughts. That leaves the remainder of us feeling like we simply cannot do music, as a result of these do not click on for us. However by way of the facility and flexibility of maker {hardware}, we’re seeing every kind of latest approaches to music which will really feel extra pure to some folks. For instance, John Park developed Bricktunes, a synthesizer glove the “performs” the colours of LEGO bricks.
This challenge stands out for 2 causes. First, it’s wearable. The consumer solely wants to slide on the glove to begin making music. Second, it ditches typical key preparations in favor a user-configurable color-coded interface. Touching the finger of the glove to a pink object produces one sound, whereas touching a blue object produces one other sound. So long as the colours are distinct sufficient, the glove can register as many because the consumer likes — Park used 12 distinctive colours, which appears superb. And since these colours are on LEGO bricks, the consumer can prepare them in no matter order makes probably the most sense.
All of that is doable because of the Adafruit AS7341 10-Channel Gentle/Colour Sensor, which is a spectrometer on a small breakout board. It really works by shining pure white mild at a coloured floor and looking out on the frequencies of the mirrored mild utilizing a complete of 16 particular person sensors. This module can simply differentiate between a Brilliant Pink LEGO brick and a Coral LEGO brick.
Bricktunes incorporates an Adafruit RP2040 Prop-Maker Feather improvement board to take readings from the colour sensor. That board has a built-in I2S audio amplifier, so it might play the sounds related to every colour. Park programmed the board in CircuitPython to benefit from the improbable synthio library, which might carry out true synthesis on the RP2040 microcontroller. The supplied code is superior, however customers can at all times alter that to play completely different notes or to work with different colours. The one different part is a 500mAh lithium battery for energy.
The elements can connect to any glove, so that you’re free to precise your self with a method that matches your individual style. We suspect that this can make music much more enjoyable for these of us who battle with the standard devices and gadgets.