Team - Hannah, Het, Suvina & Vanessa
Create a simple application with either sound or movement as an output. Having multiple inputs would be a good challenge for this project
We put on our thinking caps 🧢 and started with a brainstorming session. We had a good session. All of us came up with bunch of interesting ideas.
All of them were very interesting but 1 that stood and fulfilled the brief requirement was the Kid’s Xylophone 🎶
Hence, we decided to go ahead with that.
Xylophone has bars of different lengths arranged side by side. When a bars is hit with a mallet or a stick, it produces sound. Each bar is tuned to produce a particular note.
We wanted to mimic this and also add a learning element for the kids. We found that a basic xylophone has 7 bar and each bar corresponds to a note from C to B. We decided to use 5 notes and added animal stickers on bars of animals whose name starts with the note letter.
We wanted something that would detect vibration when hit with a stick and convert that into a sound.
Upon doing some search, we found out that the Piezo sensor would be the ideal for this scenario.
A Piezo sensor is a device used to measure changes in pressure, acceleration, temperature, strain, or force. It uses electric charges.
The word piezo is a Greek word. It means ‘press’ or squeezes’.
It works on the principle of electric effect. The charge is collected on the plate and it is used to generate a voltage and send current through the circuit.
Upon pairing this with an Arduino board and a Speaker, whenever the sensor is hit, it will detect a vibration, send current and this change in current can trigger the speaker.
We decided to use 5 different piezo sensors, each producing different note when hit.
Credits: https://www.tinkercad.com/