Help needed for a 'musical bike' project.

[Semaj]

Hello everyone, this is my first post on this site. I have to say; the thing that brought me to this site is my own electrical incompetence, I would be INCREDIBLY grateful if ANYONE could offer ANY help! I cannot stress that enough.

Basically, I am a 3rd year student studying Music Technology & Innovation. I am studying a module that requires us to make interactive music. I chose to get a racing bike and rig up some variable resistors and a dynamo to it. The variable resistors are to be connected to 3 brake handles (it has 4 as it is a racing bike, but I want to keep one for proper brake use), and on blocks either side of the front tyre. They will be used to detect whether the person on the bike is pulling the brake or steering, and how much they are doing so. I would like to also connect a dynamo to the back wheel to detect the speed the bike is being ridden.

Why? Well, if I can gather this data I can then use it to control musical parameters. I.e., speed of peddling = tempo of music, etc. I would also like to be able to detect multiple things at once, i.e., front brake 1 in combination with turning left and peddling at x mph. The result will (hopefully) be that an individual can get on the bike (which will be static as I will raise the back wheel) and can cycle a bike through a musical space, controlling the music by their cycling actions.

I have absolutely no idea how I should go about the electronics for this. I don't know what kind of components to use, or how to wire it. To further confuse issues, I need to get the output voltages into a computer, meaning I need ADC's (analogue to digital converters) and some way of feeding it into the PC (which will then handle the music side of things in a program called Max/MSP). I believe I can use an Arduino (https://www.arduino.cc/) card to get the voltages into the PC, but I think it has to receive voltages of up to 5V. It would be good if I could power the bike of a 9V battery. I don't know if that is possible, and it doesn't really matter.

Thank you for reading this, if you have ANY suggestions I’d be eternally grateful. I need this project to work as it is part of my final degree work...it means a lot to me!

If you are confused and think you could help if you were given some more info then please, let me know and I will be happy to tell you more.

THANK YOU!

 

[Dr.EM]

Seeing as this isn't for an electronics course, i'd probably just hack an existing piece of equiptment to do what you need. For instance, here is a box with many pots which sends its data over MIDI/USB. Just take the pots via long leads to your bike controller system. It would all work simultaneously. The information can be used to control your standard software like Cubase or whatever you use this way

https://www.dv247.com/invt/19343/

For the speed, i'd either use a dynamo as you are planning or an optical tachometer using parts from an old ball mouse (this presents no resistance to the "cyclist" if that is a desirable carachteristic). It's easy enough to turn into a varying voltage and probably connect to that unit with little hassle. Sounds fun, show us when you finish it

 

[Semaj]

Hi Dr.EM,

Thanks for your ideas. I had a look at the link you recommended, and I fully agree with you on the idea of using some already existing piece of electronics equipment rather than creating my own. The Evolution UC17 X- SESSION is a nice looking piece of kit, but I'm not sure if it's the ideal piece. It's quite pricey for a start, and I was originally hoping to use variable controls to sense the movement of the brakes so that I could have continuous values rather than discrete on/off ones. The Evolution, I notice, does have this in the form of the pots, but I don't know how I could connect them to the brakes in a useable way. I am now considering making things a bit easier for myself and perhaps using discrete values for the position of the brakes. I thought perhaps a game console crontroller, like a Playstation 2 one, could be adapted to suit the purpose. Maybe if i took one apart I could extract some of the buttons and lengthen their cable. I have a PS2 to USB converter already, so I could plug it straight in. Hopefully it wouldn't be too hard to configure my music software to accept the gamepad as a control device. Perhaps I could get hold of a few computre mice and use their buttons for the brake sensors instead of the PS2 pad. The only issue then would be configuring all of the mice to work within Cycling '74s Max/MSP.

I'll certainly look into it. Thank you very much for getting back to me with these ideas, I do appreciate it. If you have any other ideas, please feel free to post it, no idea too small!

Thanks again,
Stuart

I really like your idea of using a mouse tachometer. Having no resistance on the wheels movement is a desireable charactaristic, and the idea seems fairly easy to undergo. Perhaps I could get hold of a few computer mice and

 

[Dr.EM]

It is quite pricey yeah. The idea to modify a ps2 controlled is definately a cheaper option. It will use some sort of variable controls for the analog sticks i'd guess so those could be routed out. That was my idea with the Evolution controller, to just connect the pots via long wires (though it might seem a bit destructive doing it to a new expensive unit I can see). One controller may not have enough analog controls, but you can usually connect multiple ones up easily. I guess you'd just need to write software to send the controller signals to a music program.

 

[Semaj]

Hi.

Someone has suggested using a rotary potentiometer for the steering mechanism, with a belt attached to the steering shaft, this seems like quite a good idea to me. Thought I'd put that idea on the forum to see if anyone else thinks so too, or to see if there are any other ideas.

Does anyone know where you can get custom circuits built for you in the UK? I am taking on-board all the ideas people are giving me, but am still not going to be able to build this thing myself without a lot of assistance. If i could find somewhere that wouold build it for me fairly cheaply, then I'd be delighted.

Thanks,
Stuart