User Interface

Step on the pad to control one of 15 sound tracks.

Midi

Serial data from MousePed is read by a Processing sketch. This sketch calibrates the data and outputs a MIDI signal using the RWMidi library. This MIDI data is then read by Ableton Live which controls the soundtrack. There are 15 tracks of nature sounds and synthesized loops. Each pressure sensor simply controls the volume of a music track.

Hardware

Each of the (15) pressure sensors where home-made right in the Physical Computing Labs of ITP.
Each pad is made up of two (6) six by (6) six inch metal mesh wire sandwiching a (6) six by (6) inch piece of conductive foam. One side of the sensor connects to GND, while the other connects to PWR. As more pressure is applied to the sensor, electrical resistance drops within the sensor.

The pressure sensors are connected to a 16-Channel Analog/Digital Mulitplexer/Demultiplexer CD74HC4067. The multiplexer communicates with the Arduino hardware.

The Arduino sends serial data to the Processing sketch via the XBee module. For good practice, the Processing sketch and XBee communicate via handshake method, to ensure there is no buffer overload.

More detailed information on the Hardware Interface can be found here.