Musical dripping water

• Main Author: Lin, Shunnan.
• Other Authors: Goh Wooi Boon
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2009
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Computer science and engineering::Computer applications::Computers in other systems
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/17014
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The objective of this project is to design and build a musical water dripping fountain that reads in a midi file and plays music with the dripping water droplets using the H8S-38086 CPU board. The way midi file works is studied so that sufficient knowledge is acquired to understand the content of a midi file. This includes knowing how the melody, rhythm and necessary musical notations are represented in a midi file. Relevant information of the midi file is largely sought for through the internet. The findings and analysis of midi file format will be presented in this report. The software aspect takes on an application that can read in a midi file, play or write a midi file and decipher the midi file content. This application will be the main knowledge hub that finds out what are the notes to be played and the duration of each note to be played. This application will also have to do communication with H8S-38086 CPU board. This software takes on the incremental form of software development life cycle. The design and implementation process of this application is presented in this report. The firmware portion looks at using the H8S-38086 CPU board to receive midi file data, store and in turn play the data and control the relays. The relays will be the main control for the water droplets. The H8S-38086 will first display the music with a speaker upon full receipt of data. After which the relays will be controlled to play the music according to the signals received. The design, concerns and process of the development of this firmware will be presented in this report. The hammering system takes on a mechanical aspect of the project. Making use of the knowledge of physics to build the mechanism, a methodology to getting a sound that is audible and can be created in numerous pitches is sought for. The design and testing process of this system is presented in this report. The project is successfully implemented with the development of the software application that reads, loads and plays or writes a midi file, display its content and sends useful data to the H8S micro controller for further implementation and the development of the firmware system that reads and store the data received, playback with a speaker and in turn control the set of relays. However, it is regretted that a hammering mechanism to be solely maneuvered by a tiny water droplet is not implementable in this context. As such, it is concluded that the prototype behind the initial objective was met. The software application and firmware program put together as an end product can be used for producing musical sounds in similar context with a hammering mechanism via direct hammering contact.