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 keyboard
  11 * A set of drums
  12 * A pair of maracas
  13
  14 ## You will need:
  15
  16 * 1 x Raspberry Pi (plus monitor and power supply)
  17 * USB hub
  18 * 2 x Arduino Uno boards (with USB cables)
  19 * 1 x strip potentiometer
  20 * 2 x tilt sensors
  21 * 4 x piezo buzzers (the type in greetings cards, easy to get from Maplin)
  22 * 10K resistors
  23 * Bread boards (1 per instrument)
  24 * Card
  25 * Sugru (or some other modelling material)
  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. Make 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
  51 ## Pull-down Resistors
  52
  53 You’ll find your analogue inputs receive signal when you don’t expect them to.
  54 This is because there’s electricty floating around in the system, or something like that.
  55
  56 To fix this, you need to wire each input to ground, through a 10KΩ resistor.
  57
  58 A better explanation can be found [here](http://arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/DigitalPins).