Lab 2 - Our instrument in its last few development stages

For our instrument, we chose a speaker as our sound output, and replaced the LED that was previously in our circuit with that speaker. We used the potentiometer to change the tone of the note.

We tried to build our own electrical music instrument using analog sensors to tune the frequencies. We played with the force sensor, thinking that we could control the notes by pressing different areas or combinations of areas to get different resistances (and thus, frequencies). We even tried to concentrate forces on the sensor at different areas with a bolt. However, we did not get repeatable resistance readouts. Also, we could not get satisfying resistance range differences. We decided to turn to other sensors.

We decided to use the potentiometer due to its stable and linear performance. We divided the resistance into 8 parts, and then set 8 cases for different output frequencies (and thus different notes: Do, Re, Mi, etc.). See figure:

Then, we decided to use the force sensor to control volume.

We made a control panel with all of marks on it so that people could play music without having to sift through the circuit board to play what they wanted to play.

Time to sing a song!