mp3 trigger with arduino and accelerometer

[Alexandra Gelis]

Hi Happy holidays for all of you!!

I have a short 2 questions.

First of all, I am trying to create a little box that when its move by  the viewer trigger different sounds depending of the new position of the box. To be more clear:

1. The box is off until the viewer take it, so i need an initial switch.

2. Depending of the direction of the movement I need to trigger 5 different sounds, so I was planning to use an accelerometer that captures x, Y and z values of the position of the box.

Do you have some suggestions of what kind of accelerometer I can use? I need the most simple possibility to program, or do you have another idea of switch that can work for me?

Right now I am in NYC and I need to find urgent those components, where can I found it in the city?

Thanks a lot for all your help.

Alexandra

 

[Alpay Kasal]

Hi Alexandra, maybe I can help... I have such a box right now controlling the state of my demo room where i control different interactive pieces... what i've found - and this could totally be me doing something wrong or my choice to use AA batteries - but my accelerometer "drifts" over time, which can be very frustrating when you expect the cube to work well as a cube at perpindicular angles to gravity. I think i just need to switch to a better lithium ion power source, maybe someone else can chime in on this. i decided to rebuild it using tilt switches... unlike an acceleromter, this is a mechanical on/off switch driven by gravity. there is a mercury version (a drop of mercury inside a cavity rolls around with gravity) and a more earth frienly version is based on a ball bearing. the only drawbak (maybe not a drawback) with the ball bearing switch is that you can actually hear the ball inside it's brass casing. i'm using multiple switch for all axii of my cube and it is audible.maybe the mercury switches are better for your application.

also using a air of xbees to wirelessly talk to a computer in my case... this would work for you if you're driving audio from a computer. if you want to drive audio from within your cube, lady ada's wave shield is a pretty easy assmembly. it works well.

how big is your box? and does it need to be wireless?  if it's reall small, maybe just use a microcontroller (just the chip), xbee, the sensor(s) of your choice, and a power source. if it has some elbow room inside, you could keep a arduino inside and use wifi off the new boards (though this will eat your battery quickly), and have the wave shield in there with a small speaker.

ps: I just looked at your website, great work there!

Alpay Kasal
Artist/Engineer
http://Supertou.ch
twitter: @alpaykasal
blog: http://blog.LitStudios.com

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[Alpay Kasal]

i just remembered, one of my videos shows my version of the box in action very briefly http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NMErVZkXXA