Arduino.

Hello my fellow lainons. I've come here today to discuss about arduinos. What can I build with one of these? Have you managed to build something with them? Personally, I've been thinking about trying to make an "musical instrument" out of an arduino. Is it possible? I want it to have some kind of complexity. For example, i want it to be able to play chords, and melodies at the same time. Or even do slides. That would be wonderful. Anyway, share your thoughts and sorry if I misspelled something, English is not my native language.

>>566 You can make pretty much anything you can think of with one of these, the limits for the most part will be your skill and imagination.

I built Pong with an arduino deumilanove (similar to the Uno that OP has a pic of) and an oscilloscope for the display, in one very long night. I built two 6-bit DACs using twelve of the GPIO pins and 18 resistors. (Specifically, I built two resistor ladders). The two pins for the serial line were left free so that I could debug easily. The controllers were made out of tongue depressors and potentiometers wired to the analog-in pins. Every few milliseconds, the arduino picks a new place to put the oscilloscope beam. It sets the appropriate GPIO pins to HIGH and LOW, and that creates two new analog voltages for the oscilloscope's X and Y axis, putting the beam in the new spot, drawing a bit more of the game. A separate loop updates the position of the ball and two paddles. Works a treat.

I kind of impulse bought an arduino and I don't really know what to do with it, any suggestions? I am an absolute beginner so nothing too had please. Preferably something music related, I was thinking a guitar pedal might be cool or some sort of synth but I don't even know where to start. Thanks in advance

Well, Arduino by itself not really ideal for working with sound. It's a CPU with a crystal on it and that's about it. You can build DAC from passive components or use built-in analog output, these references may come in handy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2OPnrgb0pY http://www.instructables.com/id/Arduino-Audio-Output/ Like the video suggest, you might consider PCF8591, it's a dollar on AliExpress.

>>566 I build my own boards with the 328P and use them for pretty much anything and everything. Most recently I added a few shift registers to one which I use to rapidly flash data into sram modules. It's a pretty straight forward littlte microcontroller. Not much to say really.

>>592 That looks way harder, anon. Are you recommending it because it would have better sound quality? I don't really understand very much about electronics.

>>595 What exactly? You have pretty much 3 options how to get sound out of Arduino. You can use resistor ladder and address each pin, which is kind of heavy on code and uses up almost every pin to get 8 bit sound. Or you can use analog output, which is PWM. That means that if you address it with 128, the output is going to be 255 for let's say 15ns and 0 for another 15ns. What you have to use is LC circuit so you can smooth out the output to steady 128. Or you can use PCF8591, connect it up to Arduino and just throw values at it and it will do the magic by itself.

>>584 You can build a cool bitcrusher, using arduino and some other parts.

>>584 Are you familiar with Bastl instruments? Drop a few Euros their way and build yourself a sampler / bitcrusher. worth your arduino you can extend their functionality if you're feeling up to it. welcome to the world of DIY digital sound

I'm trying to use a Nano as a keyboard controller, but I don't have enough inputs on it, so I think I should use a shift register but the only registers I have are a 'mys 99 328' and a 'SN74HC595' but am not sure if they'll work

>>1660 If you want to create a keyboard you should probably use an arduino with hid support like the leonardo or the pro micro. If you don't have enough inputs you will have to multiplex, this can definately be done with the help of a 74hc595.

>>574 This sounds like a cool project, I still have a few stm32's laying around which I haven't really found a project for yet so this sounds like fun

Of interest particularly to those who use a Raspberry Pi (and possibly other boards): https://www.raspberrypi.org/magpi-issues/ Shhhhh. You didn't get it from me. ;)

supercollider + arduino = musical superpowers

I'm currently in the process of building a dry herb vape for weed with an arduino nano, a couple mosfets, some wire, a couple thermistors, an oled screen, a battery and a 3d printed case that will work with volcano bags. This thing will probably give me cancer but I'll at least be high. (maybe make a second one for DMT?)

You can get a bunch of floppy disks and use an arduine to make music https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_Q6jMUdfYc

I made a simple little hydroponics system for one of my friends, since weed's legal here in Canada now and he wanted to grow a few plants. I made a few small alterations to some instructable on how to do it, made a few hundred bucks off of it, since pre-assembled or lots of DIY 'kits' are really expensive. I spent maybe 100$ on boards, screens, sensors altogether. Right now, I'm ordering a few more from Ali sale to make myself an oscilloscope. Don't want to dish 150$ leafbux on a soykafty one, so I figured I'll make a soykafty one for a lot cheaper.

>>592 Is it accurate enough to use he analog in to convert a potentiometer's output to a midi CC signal? I was to use some cheap pots to control so CC controls in soft synths.

My homeserver is connected directly to my fiber modem so i cant access it locally, to the benefit of it having open ports. Instead of having to unplugging it and carrying it to my desk whenever i want to configure something, i made a program that makes it send its ip to an arduino which displays it on an LCD.

>>3104 The analog in pins are 10 bit so they give you a resolution of 0-1023 I am not sure what you want to do but I think you should be more concerned about the accurecy of your pots than the analog in of the arduino unless you are using 10 turn pots.

http://www.circuitbasics.com/how-to-make-an-arduino-capacitance-meter/ quick&easy project if you need to roughly measure capacitance. Just copypaste code & put 3 parts on a breadboard. Probably the best value/effort i got out of my arduino so far.

I've made a humidity sensor just to keep track of humidity levels in my living room. Some of the sensors you get for cheap are not terribly accurate, and if you want to build something a bit more complex the arduino runs out of memory pretty fast. I've done the full automation thing as well with them, just install a bunch of sensors and send events out I'd store and then analyze/keep track of for the lulz. They're good for small stuff but I'd recommend raspberri pi in general - they're way more powerful and they're not incredibly more expensive either.

>>3938 pi is less energy efficient. If you're running something on a battery you want arduino. In same category it takes power outtages without issues while Pi can get corrupted. In general Arduino is better for pure hardware projects. Pi is when you want a dirtcheap mini-server .

I built an eeprom programmer with a pro micro after learning that a programmer is at least $50, doubling the cost of another project. It's not the fastest thing in the world, the code could probably be a lot better, but it works well enough for my needs.

>>566 How do you begin to program it. Help a fellow asshat out.

>>4120 Start by downloading the IDE and following basic tutorials that specifically reference your board type. If C/C++ is the issue follow some online course until you at least understand flow control and functions.

>>4120 I had the same question, but finally got over the barrier and... just did it. It is really simple (at least on Linux, regards Ubuntu casual) , pretty much just plug and play. You must have Java installed though, I guess. So what to do: >navigate here: https://www.arduino.cc/en/main/software >select version (I have Linux 64-bit) >after download, extract >connect your Arduino via USB >run ./arduino >check if your system recognizes your board (if not, start googling... mine worked first time.) >load example program >press upload (ctrl-u) I had to change permissions for that serial port to enable uploading the script. I THINK it was 664, but am not sure. Serial port is in your /dev/, most likely named ttyUSB0 or something like that. Also here is a nice video that helped me with the first steps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSVdftDPMP4

>>566 I have done lots of small projects with Arduinos and Attinys. I use them for nearly all my electronics projects because they are wayyyy easier and cheaper compared to pcbs that use op-amps or something similar for logic. Here are some of my projects: I've built a LIDAR and ultrasonic guided autonomous robot, which used Arduinos for motor control. For a school project I've built a device, that can measure the length and radius of milling tools for CNC machines. It uses a laser to detect edges and stepper motors to turn the tool. It runs on an arduino. I've put EL-wire in my car's interieur and used an attiny to control the light and make it reactive to music. I used to play simracing games with a cheap steering wheel and used an Arduino to build a custom hand brake and clutch pedal. More recently, I used an attiny and a peltier module to build a tiny "fridge" which runs on USB which I use to store lsd. I have also recently built a handheld fine scale, which works like a handheld luggage scale, but much smaller. It can be used to weigh small plastic bags of weed directly when obtaining them, without the need of a flat surface. I am currently working on an electronic longboard which uses a drivetrain similar to a car. While this does not have any advantages, in fact quite the opposite, it is a interesting engineering challenge. The main idea is that the motor is connected to the wheels with a clutch, so you can still drive manually, but use the motors regenerative breaking when going downhill and use the motors for going uphill. I stopped the development because of the braindead regulations in Germany which caused a friend of mine to have his homemade electric vehicle taken away by police and additionally faced with a huge fine. This is a shame since the board is nearly finished, but I don't want to loose everything. A few years ago I used to worked on a startup, where we developed a device for monitoring and automating private gardens (I know, it's not a revolutionary idea but at the time it seemed useful). Though we later used esp32 chips, we initially tested with Arduinos. We came very far in the development with a working prototype device and accompanying app. We stopped the development though because this idea is ubiquitous on Kickstarter and Indiegogo and we wanted to focus on innovation. Anyways thanks for reading, I hope you can understand why I love Arduinos.