Published January 11, 2021 © GPL3+

Simple Hand controlled instrument

A DIY instrument that you can play by moving your hands in the air!!

BeginnerFull instructions provided5,020

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Arduino UNO

Ultrasonic Sensor - HC-SR04 (Generic)

Speaker, Mini

Any speaker will do

Jumper wires (generic)

Breadboard (generic)

Software apps and online services

Arduino IDE

Story

Watch the video to see it at work!!!

This is a fun instrument that lets you play simple tunes by waving your hands in the air!!

The quarantine always makes us crave some fun and so we thought of new things to do with the few components we were stuck with at home.

What better than some music!!!

So here we are, with a simple setup for playing tunes with your hands! Have fun!!

The basic idea is to be able to generate different frequencies of sound based on the position of your hand, which is sensed using an ultra-sonic sensor.

Connect your circuit as per the schematic given below. Paste the given code in your Arduino IDE and upload it.

Keep your sensor in an open space such that there are no obstacles in front of it for at least a meter. Place your palm or any other obstacle in front of the sensor to obtain varying frequencies.

In the given code the sounds are emitted at a fixed time interval for a fixed duration. You can play around with this by changing the value of the variables 'tim' and 'space'.

Also, play around with the way the frequency is calculated from the distance. Here it is:

tones =20+distance*5;

To see the distance of the obstacle measured by the sensor you can add the following code to void setup.

Serial.begin(9600); // Serial Communication is starting with 9600 of baudrate speed
 Serial.println("Project by theriveroars"); // print some text in Serial Monitor to indicate setup

And the following code in void loop.

Serial.print("Distance to obstacle= ");
 Serial.print(distance);
 Serial.println(" cm");

Thus you can view the distance in centimetres.

Have fun with this project and include multiple speakers and sensors to create more complex and fun instruments.

Keep learning!!

Code

Code for tunes with hand gesture

#define echoPin 6 
#define trigPin 5 
long duration; // variable for the duration of sound wave travel
int distance; // variable for the distance measurement
int tones;  
int tim=200;// duration for which one sound pulse will last
int buzzerPin = 8;
int space =500;

void setup() {
  pinMode(trigPin, OUTPUT); // Sets the trigPin as an OUTPUT
  pinMode(echoPin, INPUT); // Sets the echoPin as an INPUT
  pinMode(buzzerPin, OUTPUT);
  }
  
void loop() {
  
  //Finding distance of obstacle using ultrasonic sensor
  digitalWrite(trigPin, LOW);
  delayMicroseconds(2);
  digitalWrite(trigPin, HIGH);
  delayMicroseconds(10);
  digitalWrite(trigPin, LOW);
  
  duration = pulseIn(echoPin, HIGH); // Reads the echoPin, returns the sound wave travel time in microseconds
  distance = duration * 0.034 / 2; // Distance = time*speed/2
  
  //Emitting sound as per the distance
  
  tones =20+distance*5; //calculating the frequency that has to be emitted

   tone(buzzerPin, tones, tim); //emits sound at the specified frequency and for the specified duration
    
   delay (space); //delay between each beat
  
}

Simple Hand controlled instrument

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Software apps and online services

Story

Schematics

Here is the fritzing file

Pictorial representation

Schematic representation

Code

Code for tunes with hand gesture

Credits

theriveroars

Comments

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Simple Hand controlled instrument

Simple Hand controlled instrument

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Software apps and online services

Story

Schematics

Here is the fritzing file

Pictorial representation

Schematic representation

Code

Code for tunes with hand gesture

Credits

theriveroars

Comments

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