EL wired electrical instrument?

[scythe000]

Hi everybody! I am an industrial musician, and I'm looking to create a new instrument. I have a nice 6 foot length of chromed pipe, and a variety of great electroluminescent wire. I'm thinking, I could wire up a contact mike to the EL wire, so when I strike the stuff on the floor, the contact mike picks up the sound, triggers the wire to flash, and then sends a signal to a laptop to play a sample. I'm down to do a bit of soldering, but I don't really have any circuit building experience. Any thoughts on how I could do this, and make it rugged enough to be smashed around on stage? Bonus points if I could do the whole thing completely wireless, maybe with Bluetooth or something.

[BBadger]

Some thoughts, yes, but you really haven't done enough legwork or learning to make it worth spending the effort to brainstorm. You should do some research yourself, make a prototype, and then if you still have problems, come back with specific questions, not ambiguous cool-idea-tell-me-how-to-do-it. After that you can work on making it rugged enough to not get destroyed by the elements at Burning Man -- that's the last stage.

I think the process would help you a lot as an "industrial musician." Good luck.

[scythe000]

Some thoughts, yes, but you really haven't done enough legwork or learning to make it worth spending the effort to brainstorm. You should do some research yourself, make a prototype, and then if you still have problems, come back with specific questions, not ambiguous cool-idea-tell-me-how-to-do-it. After that you can work on making it rugged enough to not get destroyed by the elements at Burning Man -- that's the last stage.

I think the process would help you a lot as an "industrial musician." Good luck.

Fair enough! I am planning on doing this anyway, so I'm heading down that path. Thanks for the straight talk.

[badscr]

I dont quite under stand what your trying to do and i dont know all the details, but here is what i think your trying to do.


mic to trigger is not a good pick for that environment. Background noise can trigger it, ect
instead use something like this:
Fast Vibration Sensor Switch (Easy to trigger) $1
Slow Vibration Sensor Switch (Hard to trigger)$1
this plays Sound and would work with the Vibration switches $25


My pick would be an accelerometer + MPU, an accelerometer gives you alot of control and can do alot more.
Use something like an Arduino to read the Accelerometer and select what to play.
could detect: flick up, flick down, flick right, flick left, jab forwards, idk what else
(Matter of Programming)


id go with a Triple-Axis Accelerometer $18 but worth the money
Adafruit Pro Trinket - 5V 16MHz $10
this plays upto 11 Sound clips $25
Lipo Battery Board $20 - to power 5V 1Amp stuff listed
Lithium Ion Cylindrical Battery - 3.7v 2200mAh $10

to control the EL wire, N-channel MOSFET on the ground side to EL transformer 12V side. Make shore u add some strain relief (hot glue will work) to the IRL2703PBF and Electrolitic Capacitors and wires. Beatting this thing around is alot of stress
Key MOSFET (IRL2703PBF 30V 20Amp 1Volt trigger TO-220 package $1 ea) specs:
Vgs(th) 4Volt or less
Rds(on) this will determan the power Drop across it ==> I^2 * Rds(on) = Watts Heat at MOSFET = Amps^2 * Rds
Rja Degrees C increase above ambant Per Watt with no heat sink
Vdss Max Voltage Across
Id Max Amps


Some other things to look at:
MicroSD card breakout for Arduino ?
Differ types of Sound Players, that probily have a better way to trigger sound over like SPI or I2C ??
Adafruit Feather M0 With builtin Bluefruit LE (3.3V pins???)

[scythe000]

mic to trigger is not a good pick for that environment.
instead use something like this:
Fast Vibration Sensor Switch (Easy to trigger) $1
Slow Vibration Sensor Switch (Hard to trigger)$1
this plays Sound and would work with the Vibration switches $25


My pick would be an accelerometer + MPU, an accelerometer gives you alot of control and can do alot more.
Use something like an Arduino to read the Accelerometer and select what to play.
could detect: flick up, flick down, flick right, flick left, jab forwards, idk what else
(Matter of Programming)

id go with a Triple-Axis Accelerometer $18 but worth the money
Adafruit Pro Trinket - 5V 16MHz $10
this plays upto 11 Sound clips $25
Lipo Battery Board $20 - to power 5V 1Amp stuff listed
Lithium Ion Cylindrical Battery - 3.7v 2200mAh $10

Aha!
Great thoughts! I'm going to dig through all this tomorrow in detail. Thank you!

[badscr]

https://learn.adafruit.com/magic-wand?view=all this is a project that could be adapted. It has a lot of Parallels


https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-mus ... y?view=all some info on a different sound player

I'll give a better post later, this was a quick wake & post, I did not read the links just a quick skimming

[Token]

Plus, ditch the el wire:

1. EL is so 20 years ago.
2. Fragile as fuck.
3. Dim and unexciting.

Go LED

The arduino maker space is pure gold for this.

[badscr]

like Token was saying about LEDs
Lots of NeoPixel LEDs to choose from


think this is what you are looking for.
tech info on the Sound board

Arduino with BlueTooth $30
Audio FX Sound Board 16MB Flash $25
9-DOF Accelerometer/Gyroscope/Magnetometer $20
whats left: power Switch, sound output, power, lighting




iterestin: BlueTooth midi