Arduino controlled 8-relay light organ plays a batucada. Prepared for ''ToneAThon'' 2016, internal music competition at Ericsson. (I will link the video as it will be available.)
There is no long list of genres, which can be played on 8 relays. March is too square for an already square platform. Bolero is better, but it is difficult to implement monoton increasing volume with 8 channels of same rhythm instruments. Finally, I voted on Batucada, because there are some dynamic patterns, which are interesging enough to fill a cca. 3 minutes song: crescendo, solo teheme echoed by the choir, and tempo increase.
Arduino Nano controls a relay module, which are switching 8 LED lamps: red, green, blue, white, red, green, blue, white. That's all, nothing special here.
The requirement is a program, which plays a song when the
device is turned on.
So, the player use no interrupts,
only digitalWrite() and delay()
instructions.
It eats up some extra clock cycle, especially with the wrappers,
but please, no one will hear this delay,
it's a 16 MHz processor,
at least 16x as fast as a Commodore 16.
The m() (m for macro) macro sets the values of v1..v8,
then several v() (v for value) function call plays a
8-column pattern with these values.
The series of v() calls are generated from
OpenOffice/LibreOffice spreadsheet HTML export.
Writing patterns in text editor was uncomfortable,
that's why I choose spreadsheet, it's
the best pattern editor.
The v() function can switch a relay,
or make a quick double-switch.
There are two cases which must be solved:
set the initial state of lamps before a pattern
(see mut() and lit() functions),
and set (usually turn off) a lamp in a certain
position of the pattern, without using a separate column for it.
These tricks are needed because odd number of switch
leaves the lamp in the opposite state.
Probably, it's not the best method for songwriting, I almost ran out of 8 columns, but it was easy to implement and required no separate editor or even a real player. I have no further plans with it.
Fork it, tweak it, enjoy.