An Ear that draws


The five humans senses give us the ability to enjoy, taste and perceived our world. Art in it's most general form, is a print of thoses senses on an process. Art wheter it's a paint, a song, a dance is the expression and the reception of the senses. Some people may be more sensitive to their senses then others, and other lack one or more senses, causing handicap but also skills wich result of an adaptation to compensate the missings senses. Some people also perceived senses in a way that the "typic" individu could not imagine, like the synesthetes, those people who hear color or see sound. Everybody sees and hear, feel and taste in their own ways, nothing is the same for everybody, we are all unique in our ways of perceiving and sensing the element all around us.

For my Final project, I want to demonstrate that the senses is a tool for us to perceived the world, but not a perfect tool. I want to show that while a sound is normally heard, it also exist on others levels, and that if every sequence of sound is unique, then it's physical representation will be too. The Idea came to me while I was listening to the amazing soundtrack of Kid Koala, Music To Draw to : SatelliteĀ 

What will it do:


I want to do a two axis machine (plotter) that will also have a microphone and will draw over sound. It will be a 2 step projects, where the first part will be to take sounds via a microphone and process it into a Gcode, while the second part is gonna be a simple plotter that will use this Gcode to draw using only two axis (x,y) and one color.

Who's done what beforehand?:


I found a few similar projects, but none of them had the same approach as me about the application and philosophy behind my idea. Drawbot that uses sound to draw already exist, but I didn't found any of them that use a microphone to generate Gcode, those I found always uses an audio file. One really nice project that will for sure be a source of inspiration in the making process is the TRS Drawbot this little Drawbot is simply drive by two servo motors conect to an audio jack. The Idea is to use an existing draw, convert it in a stippled version and use the traveling salesman algorithm to connects the dots. We then convert the draw into a .wav format. We can finally send that .wav format trough the jack plug.



There is also a super interesting TED talks that is really close to what I wanna demonstrate. The talk is done by Neil Harbisson a young man who was born with

What materials and components will be required?


For the list of material see the BOM found here, They will come from a numbers of electronic store, digikey mostly, and hardwareshop like RONA for the machine parts. Almost everything will be bought on the web and ship to my workplace. The total price of the machine will be around 250$ and will have lots of spare parts for future projects.

What parts and systems will be made?:


I will design the software with processing for my waves draw, taking an input from a jackaudio passing trought a multiplexer and my msgeq7 chip, all the electronics input and output will be homemade using my milling machine to machine my boards. I will also design and built the machine using rod and bearings, nuts and screws two stepper and a servo. Everything will be design by me. The processing code will be write by me with help of similar code and human ressource around the lab. My motor drivers will also be made and design by me.

What process will be used?:


A lot of knowledge gain from the fabacademy will be used to achieve my final project. here's are a few: -CAD -LaserCutting -CNC milling -PCB Milling -Vynil Plotter -Electronic Design -Machine Design -Interface programming using processing -Embedded programming. I also may use 3D printing for a few part of my machine (pen holder)

3D Design


Since I'm bulding a machine, I think it's important and will ease the process to CAD the design to make sure everything is in order before actually working on the hardware. I started by doing the plaque that will receive my linear bearings, and my gear that drives my belt. I decided to do a design that would fit the top, middle and bottom plaque at the same time, so I only have to do one design instead of 3. So here we go!

First thing I did is looked online to find the measurments of my linear bearing so I could "import" them into my plaque to plan my holes.



Then I design the part did with a simple rectangle with 4mm screws in each corner, nice little trick here, if you want to make your design really parametric and easy to modify, when setting your dimension, only set one circle, the other you can set them by clicking on the first dimension set, this will make it so if you change your first circle, they will all changes.



In my first design, I tought 3 linear bearing will be ok to drive correctly my rod, but I realise a bit later than it would be better for me to have 4 bearing for the stability of my design, will come to that later.

I then made the plaque with 4 hole of 8 mm in each corner for my screws. Once the plaque was done, I insert 6x my bearing fixture design so I can place them all without collapsing into one another.



Next, I made a square in the middle of my design with a 4mm circle in each corner so we can fix my driving gear for my belt.



I then extrude my component by a quarter inch since I use 1/4 acrylic fot this part.



Time for a first cut to see if everything looks fine!, I import my draw into inkscape by making a drawing from my component inside fusion and export it as a pdf, using inkscape I got my file ready for lasercutting. I made the mistake of doing my first prototype in acrylic, always use cardboard if you can so you won't waste too much material. Here are the first result I got.



I made two major mistake, first thing is I inverse the position of my horizontal and vertical bearing, so the holes wouldn't fit. Second thing I did wrong is that I didn't think of the diameter of my driving gear so the gear would collapse inside the hole of my bearing fixture like you can see in the image above. The fix was simple tough, I just inverse both the horizontal and vertical bearing fixtures by changing the dimension, and I illustrated my gear by doing a circle of the same diameter as an indicator to make me know if my hole collapse.



I then test it again with cardboard this time and it fits perfectly!



Next step was to design my motor holder. I'm pretty proud of this one, I think I did a good job designing something solid and stiff! one of the chalenge was that my motor shaft needed to be a the righ heigh for it to receive the belt correctly.

Electronic Design


For my Input and Output Desing you can see the technicality on my Input and Output week pages.

My input consist in an audio jack taking a signal and being processed by a msgeq7 chip wich serve as an FFT, using the chip and a multiplexer, I can send data from a perspective window of 7 different frequency. the signals are then send via serial to my processing software.