First Soft Circuits Open Lab

soft circuits open lab

This Sun­day we’­re hol­ding our first Soft Cir­cuits Open Lab at the Scho­ol of Fine Arts in Lis­bon (FBAUL — Facul­da­de de Belas Artes de Lis­boa). The­re is no pre­de­fi­ned struc­tu­re for the event. We will meet for the cour­se of one day with the pur­po­ses of sha­ring kno­wled­ge, expe­ri­men­ting fre­ely, advan­cing on-going pro­jects, and just having fun wor­king together. Some of the peo­ple atten­ding will be spe­ci­a­lists in elec­tro­nics and others in tex­ti­les. Bar­camp sty­le impromp­tu pre­sen­ta­ti­ons are very welcome.

Altlab will pro­vi­de some basic tools such as pli­ers, scis­sors, sol­de­ring irons, iro­ning board, etc. But par­ti­ci­pants must bring all the mate­ri­als and addi­ti­o­nal equip­ment neces­sary for their own projects/experiments (inclu­ding lap­tops). Here are some sug­ges­ti­ons: any kind of fabric, nee­dles and thre­ad, yarn, t‑shirts, con­duc­ti­ve and/or resis­ti­ve fabric, con­duc­ti­ve thre­ad, con­duc­ti­ve and/or resis­ti­ve yarn, knit­ting and/or cro­chet nee­dles, LEDs, coin cell bat­te­ri­es, bat­tery hol­ders, EL wire, strands of fiber optics, cop­per foil, cop­per adhe­si­ve track, alu­mi­num foil, resis­ti­ve foam, regu­lar foam, ardui­nos (lily­pad or any other kind). If you’­ve never wor­ked with any of the­se mate­ri­als and don’t have them handy, come anyway, you can help some­o­ne else with their pro­ject and learn along the way.

For more infor­ma­ti­on on soft cir­cuits tech­ni­ques and mate­ri­als, check out the Soft Cir­cuits Resour­ces sec­ti­on on the open­Ma­te­ri­als wiki.

This open lab will take pla­ce on Febru­ary 21st, from 10:30 to 18:30, at the Scho­ol of Fine Arts in Lis­bon, room 307, 1st flo­or (sin­ce our own spa­ce is still under cons­truc­ti­on). All are wel­co­me, the­re is no fee nor regis­tra­ti­on, but ple­a­se do let me know if you are plan­ning on coming: catarinamota(at)audienciazero.org

Drum Pads

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Hey.

Four drum pads ready to go.

All made of old mate­ri­al found in the Alt/Lab ins­tal­la­ti­ons, and a very spe­ci­al big thankxxx for Móni­ca who brought the casings (we are going back to that in a moment) for the drum pads.

So the idea was to make drum pads that we could hook up to a sound card(or wha­te­ver) and them make swe­et music, this is a very nice com­bi­na­ti­on betwe­en pie­zo­e­lec­tric com­po­nents and a few layers of some absor­bent sound  mate­ri­al like rub­ber or cork foil (that’s what we use becau­se the­re was nothing more) and a pie­ce of alu­mi­num foil for a gre­a­ter drum area .

We use an old can (20l) of paint, four pie­zo­e­lec­tric found in elec­tro­nic junk like old modems and old telepho­nes, wire for con­nec­ting the pie­zos, cork foil for insu­la­ti­on the drum pad area and Móni­ca sup­ply the casings (squa­re rub­ber cd´s stands), and glue for put­ting everything nice and tight .

First we cut a pie­ce of the can (cir­cu­lar about 10cm radius)and we glu­ed the pie­zo into it, then we dril­led one hole into the rub­ber casing for the wires to came out, them we cut two squa­re cork foil parts (the first in the bot­tom of the casing and the other for the top) a bit of glue and that’s it drum pads ready to rock.

Now we got some audio coming out of the pads but thats just boring becau­se its always the same and we want to go further like trans­for­ming audio into midi mes­sa­ges, and we found the right tool for it, its cal­led  “KTDrum­Trig­ger” and he trans­forms the audio sig­nal into midi notes, we can use this midi notes insi­de a sequen­cer pro­gram to con­trol any kind of ins­tru­ment (either VSTI or some other stuff), in our case we use the drum pads to con­trol “Bat­tery” and thats it ins­tant fun.

The­re are some other links and some other ide­as for drum pads. This “one“uses ardu­nio as a sour­ce for the imput signal.

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