walker development log

first prototype made!
see versions page
    

at-a-glance
  made box layout  
  bought a bunch of tools
  debugged ribbon controller
  sped up boot time to ~15 seconds

in-depth

made box layout
  used a panel of cardboard to lay out all the knobs and sliders temporarily

bought a bunch of tools
  got some snips to cut sheet metal, as well as some drill bits to drill holes 
  in the chassis

debugged ribbon controller
  made it so the top range of the controller does not activate notes

sped up boot time to ~15 seconds
  removed some unnecessary boot tasks on the raspberry pi to get the boot time
  to a (consistent) ~15 seconds  
    

at-a-glance:
  ordered HAT for raspi, chassis, and knobs/sliders
  created CAD model of lid
  got arduino to use hardware and had arduino control synth

in depth:

hardware and control
  breadboarded pots and switches to control parameters. i spent a longer time 
figuring out the most reactive parameters to which i mapped each control 
apparatus than actually doing the mapping. i found it to be pretty tough to define 
exactly how the sound changed. obviously i knew what was going on, which actually 
hindered my ability to describe things. for this reason, i asked my partner to help 
me define what parameters the different pots and switches changed. she provided 
a better perspective than i could regarding the naming of parameters. i could 
name things after the math that was going on, but i think that won't serve the 
experience of actually using the instrument.

orders
  found a pretty barebones HAT for audio on a raspberry pi 3B. it essentially maps
the two PWM pins on the GPIO of the pi to two mono channels. all i'd have to do is
wire each pole to a TS output.
  chose a couple (nice) knobs and sliders to spruce up the feel of everything. i 
have a marshall code 100H that i like to use and i've always been a fan of the 
metal knobs. smallbear happens to sell knobs in that marshall style!
  bought an aluminum chassis from hammond manufacturing. for prototyping layouts, i
have a couple cardboard boxes that i can use as the lid temporarily. eventually, 
i'd like to have it machined or find some kind of tool to get it done. a set of 
shears would work, though it'd be pretty hard. hammond have a lot of chassis that 
look great for some synths!

CAD model
  i made a model in blender (not great for CAD) to potentially get a lid machined 
or otherwise obtain a custom enclosure. upon getting some quotes, it will be 
cheaper to cut apart the chassis i ordered myself. the CAD model will be helpful 
while planning, nonetheless.

further steps
  all that's left is to get a raspberry pi to run csound and get it to output into
two TS jacks. after that, its a matter of assembling everything, and the instrument 
is done!
    

at-a-glance:
  sparkfun shipment was late!
  set up communication between arduino and csound
  made new roadmap (re-uploaded)

in depth:

new roadmap
  upon your feedback and my setup of communication with csound, i came to the 
realization that it would be better for me to focus on building the instrument
and locking everything down on that front before using it to compose a piece.
  in the meantime, i created a new roadmap. everything is as would be expected
for the development of an instrument like this. one thing i think is worth 
mentioning is that i've allowed myself 2 weeks before the final presentation 
of the instrument to both learn it and debug whatever might be going wrong.

communication between arduino and csound
  i set up a potentiometer that provides values to csound via the arduino serial
protocol included within csound. it took a while because i had to learn about
binary operators in C for the first time. very fun!
  i used a potentiometer because the pressure strip will indeed be a potentiometer.
the next step will be to get all of the inputs from each of my components working
to control csound.

    

midi controller design
  i've decided to go with a 200mm ribbon potentiometer as the main note input. in
addition, ive decided to add 3 sliding pots for the n1, n2, and n3 parameters of 
the superformula, one 10 position rotary switch for the m1 parameter, and 2 more 
rotary pots for the center position of the superformula on the terrain.