Help with Piezo sensors
Hi there,
I am curently in college and as a project i am proposing to create a sound installation. The plan is to use piezo sensors that detect movement
and these sensors will communicate with ableton to trigger a clip/piece of music. Am a total novice and have been reading some of the posts. Do i need to use a Arduino board to bridge between sensors and ableton? im using max for live within ableton.
Also can anyone direct me to a patch thats needed? i really need some help on this and any help is gratefully appreciated
Thanks
Shane
What do you mean by detect movement? piezos can detect vibration (on a surface) but can't really tell that someone/something is moving (as in, moving in a room).
For whatever type of sensor you want to use you'll need some kind of ADC (analog to digital converter). The Arduino is a very cheap and easy to use version of this. You can also use Maxuino and do all your programming straight in Max (without having to touch/write Arduino code).
don't forget your soundcard is also a very good ADC!
Hi guys. detecting vibration is what i meant to say. i will have multiple sensors in room and i want each sensor to be able to trigger a midi clip
within Ableton. i never heard of Maxuino but im going to look into it. My question is how exactly do i get these sensors connected to the
board and connected to Ableton? i have Ableton suite 8 with max for live.
Thanks
Lots of guides for that kind of thing:
http://todbot.com/blog/2006/10/29/spooky-arduino-projects-4-and-musical-arduino/
http://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/KnockSensor
http://webzone.k3.mah.se/projects/arduino-workshop/projects/arduino_meets_processing/instructions/piezo.html
Still not sure what you mean on the physical side of things. Like you want a couple piezos attached to the floor in a room, and people walking will trigger it?
Its going to be a sonic art installation Rodrigo, and for instance i want to have 8 piezo sensors on a floor in a room spaced 5 feet apart. When
someone walks or steps on the sensor this will trigger a clip in ableton lets say a loop. and lets say someone else walks into the room and
stands over another sensor, another clip will play. if 5 people are in the room and stand on sensors 5 clips will play and so forth. i just want the sensors to trigger the midi clips and when the person steps off the sensors the clip ends.
Yo can use - if you have a one - a MIDI drum trigger module and connect the piezo sensors as triggers - it's very robust solution, especially for multiple sensors. I used some Yamaha and Alesis modules, and it was always rock-stable system. Moreover old MIDI drum modules are not expensive (if you have a luck...).