Physical Computing: Week 3 Labs

In this lab we used the analog input on the Arduino to control a tonal output from a small speaker. Everything was pretty straight forward, except the volume of the tone was quite low. Although the lab suggests you can increase the volume by changing the resistor strength I did not notice a significant change in the volume.

In this lab I also used potentiometers rather than force sensors, mainly to avoid having to do any wire wrapping. This does change the dynamic of the “instrument” since potentiometers hold their position when released while force sensors need to be pressed in order to maintain that state. This means the instrument no longer really functions as a keyboard but is a 3-tone knob based instrument.

The next lab focused on using the analog input of an Arduino to control a servo motor. Once again this was very straight forward and no problems arose.