Musical Arduino ideas?

[Steve A.]

Build Your Own Robot plans from Popular Mechanics

Anybody looking into a fun project using Arduinos might want to check out this DIY project:

Build Your First Robot - With Plans and Step-by-Step Instructions - Popular Mechanics


On a different note, guitar projects involving the Korg Kaoss devices sound very intriguing!

Kaoss Guitar, Korg Kaoss Pad / Epiphone Les Paul Mod | unmaintained


And here is Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips with a Kaossilator added to a Guitar Hero controller:

Flaming Lips Guitar Hero mod

Steve Ahola

[bob p]

Hey Steve, I really like the idea of using the RPi as a music access point. I've ripped my music collection, so now I've got a file server that's loaded with serveral TB of ripped music. All that I need is to work out an interface to provide a tablet-based browsing front end to the music server, and a way to hook up something like an RPi to provide the analog outputs to go into an old-fashioned (tube!) stereo.

I've heard that the RPi audio outputs have a bug in them that makes them click and bump, and that most people try to get the audio out signal off of the HDMI port to avoid this.

Are you aware of anyone who's blazed the trail for something like this? I had tried making a squeezebox-type front-end using a laptop on the LAN, but I'd really prefer to have: A) the file server that serves up streaming audio; B) something simple and low-power like an RPi to pull the digital audio off of the LAN and send audio outs to the stereo; and C) a wireless tablet for the user interface.

If anyone knows of a good way to solve the problem, I'm all ears!

[Steve Conner]

Hi Bob

Pretty sure the Pi will do what you want. I run MPD and control it with the MPod app from my IPhone. (Android app also available for all you Apple haters. ) There's also the PHPMP web interface, accessible from any device with a web browser.

Seems like the only difference between your proposed setup and mine is, you want a separate audio server, but I have the audio on a hard disk plugged right into the Pi, and I have it set up as a SMB server so I can rip CDs directly to it from my computer. I've seen it done the other way round though.

Even when it's not glitching, the analog output is dreadful. 12 bits on a good day. You have to use HDMI, or a carefully chosen USB DAC. I got the AB-1.2 DAC from QNKTC and it works great. (It also has open-source firmware, based on the SDR-Widget software radio project.)

Before that I tried another USB DAC, but it only worked at 44.1kHz and 16 bits. If I tried to push it any higher, it glitched like crazy. YMMV.