Even with a group of 6 tech-savvy college students, only one of us had any prior experience with physical tech. Equipped with his toolbox of secrets and wires, Will set out to piece together one of the most vital components of this project: translating all of the instructions we are creating on the computer to our sound devices.
Originally we intended to have 6 audio inputs using 3 tape players, each with a LEFT/RIGHT channel. In order to accomplish this, Will needed to wire each audio source to the Arduino so that it could then trigger when the audio should be on/off (depending on if there was a tweet or not).
- Will had originally envisioned the project using a Bipolar Junction Transistor rather than a Field Effect Transistor Essentially, a BJT is always “off” until you turn it “on”, while a FET is always “on” until you turn it on “off”. While this was a relatively quick fix in the Arduino code, it took some tinkering to figure out what was wrong.
- Wiring is hard. The bread board holes are very small, so as will discovered it is extremely difficult for standard core wire to be manipulated into these holes. Because we are using mostly audio equipment, most wiring is typically standard core because it is less prone to breaking. While this may be good for the wires themselves, Will had a really hard time making it all work together within such a tight space.
Once the actual bread board was constructed and connected to the Arduino, we met to try and piece it all together. The final breadboard consists of 4 NTE 2343 transistors, 4 resistors and a ground.
- After we met to combine it all together, all the pieces worked separately but not when combined. Currently we are still working on trying to make sure that the sound only plays when triggered. It looks like some of our audio inputs are stronger than we expected and need to either be grounded separately, or we need to add more resistors.