Skill Sharing workshop – Fruit Piano
Group 5:
Ivy Sun
Rhepa Kamal
John Xu
Ethan Griffin
Intro
In this skill-sharing workshop, we will be making a fruit piano. The fruit piano will consist of real fruits attached to the circuit playground express and will play a tune when the fruits are touched. We followed a tutorial online, then implemented our own personalization to it which the other group will follow. This tutorial is unusual since we are using fruits as a capacitive touch which is why we chose this.
Materials required
- 1x Circuit Playground Express
- 6x Fruits. (in our case we used oranges, kiwi, lemon and apples.)
- 6x Alligator clips
- 1x USB cable
Where to buy materials
Fruits
- Any grocery stores either local or big.
- Supermarkets.
- Food marts…etc.
Circuit playground express
- Digikey
- Amazon
- Creaton(if living in Toronto).
Alligator clips
- Digikey
- Amazon
- Michaels
- Walmart
- Creaton(if living in Toronto)…etc.
Micro USB data
- Amazon.
- Digikey.
- Best Buy.
- The source.
- Any local or electric store…etc.
Link to the tutorial video
Circuit Diagrams (if used)
Step by step documentation of the workshop process with images.
Making The Code
1. The first step is to put the “On Start” block and add the “Set Volume” to 255.
2. Add an “If” statement block. That is where we will create our events. Then drag in the “Input is pressed” block in the “if” statement true section in order for the capacitive touch to work. Proceed to add a tone with any choice of the keys that will play the sound.
3. Add a rest block of half a beat. This is necessary and important because it delays half a second to avoid repeating sounds.
4. Add any color of your choice and a clear block. The clear block will clear the sound after triggering it. Proceed to copy and paste the whole “If” statement blocks. Make sure to change the colors, the tone and the “Input is pressed” block for each section.
Code Link
https://makecode.com/_5EzV81A5D8Cv
Building The Piano
1. Attach the alligator clips onto the CPX touchpads. We used A1,A2,A3,A4,A5 and A6.
2. Attach the other end of the alligator clip onto the lemon.
3. Connect your micro USB data onto the CPX and power source and that should be the overall look. Do not arrange them too close to each other, or it will cause interference!
Bonus & Reflection
This was a fun project to do. Besides experimenting with fruits, we also experimented with vegetables and got interesting results! We tested out by using carrots, cabbage, potato, tomato, mushroom, pumpkin avocado and Taro.
Potato, tomato, mushroom, avocado and taro, worked. Pumpkin was the only one that didn’t work. With carrots and cabbage, it was really weird because it kept triggering. We’re not sure why, but it could be affected by the water and acid in the fruits. Nevertheless, it was fascinating to experiment with this project with various ranges of fruits and vegetables.
Related tutorials & works cited in APA.
Inspired by:
Nelson, C. (2016, November 15). Circuit Playground Fruit Drums. Retrieved March 14, 2021, from https://learn.adafruit.com/circuit-playground-fruit-drums
Park, J. (2017, December 11). FruitBox Sequencer: Musically Delicious Step Pattern Generator. Retrieved March 14, 2021, from https://learn.adafruit.com/circuitpython-fruitbox-sequencer-musically-delicious-step-pattern-generator
The lime tutorial we mainly absorbed:
Rembor, K. (2020, July 1). Circuit Playground Express: Piano in the Key of Lime. Retrieved March 14, 2021, from https://www.digikey.com/en/maker/projects/circuit-playground-express-piano-in-the-key-of-lime/00fa9517033d464a90836581abddf2fc