Inspired by Avoka's Dyskograf, we present an Arduino-powered turntable for which you can draw your own "vinyls". A plate turns on a motor whose speed is controlled with a potentiometer. Drawings on circular discs are placed on the plate, and the drawing marks are detected by infrared sensors. A Processing code reads the sensor data and interprets it, playing or generating sounds. Hence, your drawings are transformed into looping music!
Optical Turntable 2.0
Optical Turntable 1.0
OPTICAL TURNTABLE 2.0
Featuring a number of aesthetic improvements, the Optical Turntable 2.0 uses a mahogany-stained wood base, under which are housed an two Arduinos (one for sensor I/O and one for motor control) and a motor control driver. We designed a PCB (mounted under the steel arm) which holds all of the IR sensor circuits.
THE SCIENCE BEHIND
Black marks on a white surface are detected by RPR-220 infrared sensors -- the same technology that allows robots to follow lines, for example. Infrared (IR) sensors are composed of an IR-emitting light (an LED, to be more specific), and an IR-receiving phototransistor which detects the quantity of light in front of it. When the IR LED emits a light onto the drawing, the phototransistor detects how much light bounced back. This is how these sensors detect black vs. white. This information is all sent to a computer, where it is analyzed and processed to play sounds whenever there is a black mark.
Project Music Connector's Optical Turntable is proudly sponsored by Advanced Circuits.
