My Haptic Feedback Beat Teacher as it existed in my Project Requirements paper is dead. (For those not in the loop: the idea was that the user would wear an armband with an actuator inside; a computer, using a simple program, would deliver both sound to the user in the form of custom music –composed by yours truly– and a haptic pulse on the desired beat. The purpose of this device and program was to improve a child’s sense of musical timing.) But this design had so many limitations: it wasn’t portable; it required the use of a computer, making it inaccessible or impractical to many it aimed to help; and I had no idea how to begin to write a program that would decipher the beat in real-time as it played the music. While searching for a controller to operate the actuator, I came across a new idea that would address all these concerns: Arduino! Used for many home electronics projects, Arduino is small and simple to use. There are countless tutorials online and I have several professors experienced in working with it. It can be powered with a USB battery pack, making it completely portable. And finally, it’s cheap and has a ton of add-ons that can be used to both play the music and analyze it.
It’s a substantial change from my original design, but it remains functionally the same and retains the same purpose. Building it shouldn’t be that complicated, which leaves me a lot of time to test it and tweak it and hopefully make my project as good as it can possibly be! As far as testing goes, much more to come on that…
