README.md

   1 # Code Club - Mini Band Project
   2
   3 Make your own mini band!
   4 You and your friends can form your own finger-sized band and rock out using Raspberry Pi and Arduino.
   5 Learn how to build circuits with sensors and outputs and write a simple programme to control your instruments.
   6
   7 ## You will make:
   8
   9 * A guitar
  10 * A set of drums
  11 * A pair of maracas
  12
  13 ## You will need:
  14
  15 * 1 x Raspberry Pi (plus monitor and power supply)
  16 * USB hub
  17 * 2 x Arduino Uno boards (with USB cables)
  18 * 1 x strip potentiometer
  19 * 2 x tilt sensors
  20 * 4 x piezo buzzers (the type in greetings cards, easy to get from Maplin)
  21 * 10K resistors
  22 * Bread boards (1 per instrument)
  23 * Card
  24 * Sugru (or some other modelling material)
  25 * Electrical tape
  26
  27
  28 ## Software requirements:
  29
  30 * Scratch
  31 * IDE developer environment for Arduino
  32 * Py Serial library
  33
  34 ## Drum Kit
  35
  36 ### 1. Make your drums
  37
  38 Take your 4 piezo buzzers and attach a ring of Sugru (or other modelling material) as shown in the picture.
  39 This will increase the flexibility and resonance of the sensors. Let the sugru set.
  40
  41
  42 ### 2. Connect the circuit
  43
  44 Piezo buzzers generate a small charges when you tap them, so they don’t need a power source.
  45 Connect one lead from your buzzer to one of your analogue inputs, and connect the other lead to ground.
  46 Repeat for each of your drums. It is easiest to use a bread board for making your circuit.
  47 Look at the picture for an example.
  48
  49
  50 ### 3. Set up in Scratch
  51
  52 Find four different drum sounds (or whatever sounds you'd like your drums to make!). Upload the sounds to Scratch.
  53
  54
  55 ## Guitar
  56
  57 ### 1. Make your guitar
  58
  59 Grab your strip potentiomater, a piece of thin card, and a pencil.
  60 Lightly draw round your potentiometer on the card and then use this as a guide to draw out your guitar shape.
  61 (The potentiomater will be the fret board of your guitar).
  62 Cut out and colour in the guitar and stick down the potentiomater.
  63 Tape a pencil or stick to the back of the guitar to make it stiffen the fret board.
  64
  65 ### 2. Connect the circuit
  66
  67 The strip just adjusts resistance, so you will need to feed it some electricity.
  68 Run +5V into one of the strip’s outer pins, and ground into the other outer pin.
  69 It doesn’t matter which way around you connect these, but it will affect which the direction
  70 the fretboard runs (high and the top, low at the bottom or vice-versa).
  71
  72 Signal will come from the centre pin, so connect that to one of your analogue inputs and you should be good to go.
  73
  74 ### 3. Set up in Scratch
  75
  76
  77
  78 ## Maracas
  79
  80 ## Pull-down Resistors
  81
  82 You’ll find your analogue inputs receive signal when you don’t expect them to.
  83 This is because there’s electricty floating around in the system, or something like that.
  84
  85 To fix this, you need to wire each input to ground, through a 10KΩ resistor.
  86
  87 A better explanation can be found [here](http://arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/DigitalPins).