Start:  9:00am

• Got the audio to split properly.  Assigned different tones to each finger.  The higher pitch sounds are actually more tactile.
• There is some weird thing that happens when the thumb and index are pushed simultaneously where all the electronics go into some type of weird grounding loop.  I have examined everything and haven’t found a short yet.  It seems to be related to the midi controller because it doesn’t happen if only the amplifiers are active, however, it could just not be happening because there is no signal in this case.  I just noticed the polarity of the signal input capacitors might be the cause. I will be sure to check this Monday.
• The sound quality is not equal across all speakers.  I might be able to increase quality by hooking up the midi devices differently using a method which better isolates the signal.  I had a link for this a while back.
• Along with pitch bend it might be good to have the amps ramp up on curved function rather then the current linear way.

end: 6:00pm

start: 9:00am

• Got the fifth finger to work.  At first I thought it was the rheostat then I thought it was the amplifier.  Turns out the amplifiers power wasn’t connected properly.  It was hard to tell because theres two grounding capacitors on the power line so it looked like it was connected.
• Mounted one rheostat and 1 amplifier to break to break out boards to try to resolve the problem above.  These will probably come in handy later.
• Working out the issue with panning the channels so each finger can have individual sound.
• pictures:

If I reviewed the pictures yesterday I might have seen that the amplifier had no power.

End: 5:00pm

Start: 9:00am

• Finished the diagnostic sketch
• Had lots of trouble with the addressing of the i2c rheostats.  I forgot that the arduino drops the left most bit because it automatically takes care of the read/write bit.  I found my blog entry which reminded me.
• the registers sub address are 0x80 or 0x00.
• The secondary register circuitry was wrong.  It was attached on the wiper side instead of the power side.
• reordered the speaker wires so its easier to tell which amplifier knob goes to which finger.
• Got 4 fingers working.  The last one is not getting the proper voltage rating from the control voltage divider.
• currently each midi is producing a constant tone for testing purposes on both left and right.  Once I get the left and right to play independently I can experiment with pitch bend and different tones per finger.

end: 5:00pm

Start: 9:00am

• The thumb sensor was not working.  I think the heat from the soldering broke the contacts attached to the wiring on the sensor.
• Started a diagnostics sketch which helps test the individual components by making it easy to activate and deactivate the parts.  This sketch will come in handy for diagnosing issues in the future as well as easy experimenting of change how the amps and sounds ramp up and down to get a more natural feel.
• This sketch is pretty much done but there are a couple of bugs that need to be worked out.  This should be working early tomorrow so hopefully I will be able to test everything tomorrow so the main sketch will work.
• Took a bunch of pictures with my phone.  Going to look through them and e-mail the good ones to myself.  They will be up tomorrow morning.

end: 5:00pm

start: 9:00

• Powered everything up.  No smoke
• Sensors working but no sounds coming out on “contact.”
• Attached headphones and found that the midi was working properly so it is probably a problem with the amplifier.
• Eventually got to a point where the peak light on the large amplifiers was lighting up.  Looked at the speakers and found out I used the wrong wires on one end.
• Once fixed sound worked.  Although the vibration goes through the whole unit, the finger that the speakers has strong enough vibrations that you don’t notice the other fingers vibrating as much.
• Fixed the analog inputs so 0 is the thumb and 4 is the pinky.
• Got the second finger working on that rheostat.  Currently both fingers are playing the same sound because the pan functions not working right.  Also there’s a direct connection to the i2c controller so I am still not sure if the bus will work properly.
• Forgot my phone today so pictures will be included on Mondays entry.
• All testing has been done using my old sketch so I still have to work out the problem with the simulation to get all the fingers working at the same time.

end 6:00

Start: 9:00am

• Finished wiring all the components together.
• Grouped up and routed the wires so it is more obvious where wires go if they get disconnected as well as reduce clutter.
• Not sure if the i2c bus will work as I currently have it.  most examples ave all the circuits in series wit a pull up resistor after each one.  I currently have them in parallel so we will see.
• Added in the other 4 fingers to the executive sketch as well as added functions using the commgr class, for sending data to the PC so I can ave a console tat sows all the fingers data.

End: 6:00pm

Start: 9:00

• Lengthened the wires for the sensor circuits and attached a connector to them
• I think I might have found the problem in my code.   I made some changes but will have to get at least one finger wired up completely before I can test it.
• Noticed that I didn’t wire one of the rheostats to the proper address.  Issue was resolved.

End: 5:00

Start: 10:20

• Finished wiring and adding the capacitors and resisters for the low-powered amp circuits
• Wired the midi controllers.  Added longer wires to the one that was wired so it can be mounted
• Everything is ready to connect to each other but I decided to stop there til I mounted everything.
• Didn’t see anything glaringly wrong with the simulation code.  It is almost an exact copy of the one that works minus the names of objects and the fact its instanced.  It might have something to do with the pan function.

End: 6:30

• The arduino side of the programming has one major error but seems to be working otherwise.   The object instantiates properly and most functions are working.  The simulation registers the contact event, but mutes the amplifier right after it starts playing.  This is probably something simple so I decided to build the hardware before looking into it further.
• While trying to get the classes to work right I found that you need to make objects of other classes public.  I think this has to do with how the IDE links everything together because all dependent classes have to be included in the main sketch.
• The debugger is not as bad as I thought in the arduino ide.  It will report errors in the included classes, not just the sketch.  It still doesn’t help with run time errors or things that you might want to step through.
• The prototype is about 60% wired and assembled.  I positioned the speakers closer to the finger tip pressure sensors to increase the difference from when the speaker is playing verse resonance of another speaker playing.
• I was able to use our Wheatstone bridge PCBs as a voltage divider circuit for the pressure sensors.  This made assembly much easier.
• Wired all the high powered amplifiers as well as attached leads to be connected to the low-powered amplifiers once the electronics are ready.
• Soldered three more amplifiers and one more rheostat to the break out boards.  Was reminded how much flux helps when doing this.
• The midi boards still need to be wired, the 3 low-powered amps as well as the 2 rheostats need their circuits completed, all the loose leads need to be connected to their proper places and it will be done.
• Assembly should be complete by the time I leave Monday.

start: 12:45

• Fixed the toString method in the control class
• Tested the control class. Initializes with no errors
• Started executive sketch.  This sketch will intialize and execute the control module instances and send outputs to the PC

end: 6:00

Start: 10:00

• Yesterday I said I wasn’t sure if you can pan channels.  I found that I was using the wrong command for volume in my class and it works similarly to pan, so it should work on individual channels.  I didn’t notice because I had the right command in the init setting volume to max and never changed it afterwards.
• Finally found a complete table for midi(A lot of the ones I find don’t have the 0xB0 control commands): http://www.midi.org/techspecs/midimessages.php
• Fixed a problem with the test sketch which was causing weird problems.  Midi and amp classes are now working completely as they should.
• Worked on the controller class some more.  Added a function which will make it so that channels 0-7 will output on left stereo while 8-15 will be on right.    It will automatically add 8 to the fingers initiated to be on the right speaker so you can treat them all the same when sending commands.

End: 6:00

Start: 2:00

• Edited test sketch to use the Midi class for midi functions.  It worked.
• I don’t think individual channels can be panned across stereo so we may need 2 more musical instrument shields.
• Tested the Controller class.  Its having problems and needs to be fixed.

End: 6:00

Start: 10:20 (Had to detour around a road closure due to flooding)

• Added aftertouch and pitch bend functions in case we need them to the midi class.
• Added a internal test simulation function to the Controller class so it can work without a computer simulation
• Worked on decision process of the controller.  Reads data from a source that can either be manipulated by the internal simulation or external sensors/computer simulation.
• Cleaned my desk before I start adding more wires.  tried to remove the shelf inside the cabinet so I can have more desk space with out having to raise the monitor.  This was harder then I thought it would be and I need a power drill.  Probably should have asked Dong how he did it first.
• I should be able to start test and debug tomorrow.

End: 6:20