And so it is another Senior Project update. This past week I made a lot of progress on my project. I got the microphones to recognize sound, but I couldn't have done it without the amazing help of my professor Joe Mckay.
I'm debating two things right now. Do I use microphones I find out of old cellphones, headphones, and speakers or do I buy a bunch of
electret microphones that are already wired with a preamp from
SparkFun.com.
| Advantages |
|---|
Repurposed Microphones |
Breakout Board for Electret Microphone |
- Keeping with the idea of repurposing materials
- Could be more interesting
- Could cause surprising outputs
|
- The wiring will be much simpler, meaning less soldering and work
- Wiring will be cleaner and less tinkering
- All microphones will have the same preamp settings
|
| Disadvantages |
|---|
- More work and tinkering
- Wiring could get extremely messy and hard to follow
- Would have to make a ton of different preamps
- Chances of shorting out a speaker are a lot higher
|
- The idea of repurposing the mics will be lost
- Having something predictable could take away from fascinating unpredictable things that could happen
- Could be losing a very important aesthetic to my project
|
I think it is extremely important to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of each method before committing to a decision. I am currently trying to use repurposed microphones to follow the aesthetic of my project. I was tinkering with an old speaker Joe gave me.
 |
| Old Speaker |
I actually got some pretty good results. I have been using a preamp circuit from
http://reconnsworld.com/forum/read.php?9,10.
Here is a few examples of the wiring I did with the microphone and the motor:
 |
| Side view of wiring for microphone and motor |
 |
| Above view of wiring, breadboard, and Arduino |
 |
| Above view of wiring for motor and microphone |
I have been experimenting on getting the sound to control the speed of the motor. I have been using an old computer fan.
 |
| Old computer fan |
The only difference between my wiring and the wiring in the simple preamp diagram is that instead of using 10K resistors I switched them out for two 500K potentiometers. Then I could manually adjust the resistance until I found a resistance that worked well with the microphone I was using.
Well that is pretty much it for now. Soon I will show you a preview of the code that I am working on in processing, but I didn't want to bombard you all with too much nerdyness in one day. Thanks for checking it out!
