The Atrium

The Project

Like I said, I like to build stuff. I've got relatively decent hands, so building my own ukulele (as if I need another one) is a natural fit. Everyone has to start somewhere. I was also interested in learning about Arduino based systems. I started looking at the basic boards and bought myself a Yun to play with. Nice start, easy to set up, but then I just stared at the thing. After several days of whining about not having a clue what to do with it, it hit me that it might be cool to light up the fretboard of a Uke with the fingerings for the basic chords as a teaching tool. It kinda took a life of its own from there. So, here's the basic plan so far:

The Plan or not the Plan

I started by buying stuff. I bought a Grizzly Concert Uke kit. That relieved me of having to worry about the body of the uke (well, mostly). It's pretty complete and the instructions are nice (plus it's not that expensive). The hardware is a little on the cheap side, so I'll upgrade that later. The fretboard included in the kit already has the frets attached. That's good/bad. It's nice as a time saver, but in terms of laying out a drill pattern and holding it in place, it's a little bit of a pain.

I also replaced my Yun with an Arduino Uno. Didn't really need the Wifi, but I have been contemplating adding a Bluetooth connection. Why not? Everything is better with Bluetooth...

I bought a small 4D systems (not to be confused with my company, Fourth Dimension Engineering) OLED display. This is going to be the main interface to the Arduino. I'm using it in slave serial mode (is that really PC?). Input at the moment is from a 5-way switch. It's a bit klunky (clunky?), so I may replace that with a capacitive touch sensor. I want to mount the display in the side of the Uke. Mounting method is TBD.

Oh, by the way, I put lots of parentheticals in my writing. There's a running multi-person dialog in my head, so they get out sometimes...get over it.

In my wanderings I came across the WS2812 LEDs on Adafruit. Pretty cool. That opened up some possibilities. Now I could make a light show too.

I also figured that since I'm adding electronics, I may as well add a pickup. I haven't selected one yet, but I'm considering an under-saddle piezoelectric type. And that let to adding a tuner. My plan (such as it is) is also to add a metronome. That turns out to be pretty important, since the Uke will have to have a sense of time/rhythm in order to be able to display the chords. I did some digging into tablature formats that are both human and machine readable, so right now, some sort of ASCII based tab seems to make the most sense. I'm nowhere near there yet.

At this point, it dawned on me that I don't really have a plan at all, just a bunch of ideas. So, I figured that I would start collecting them on a site, so I bought the ArcaneIdeas domain and started to create this site. The phrase "arcane ideas" came from a Robert A. Heinlein novel I was recently re-reading for the umpteenth time. That's a philosophical discussion for another day and place.

So, let the fun begin. As you wander around my home, you should find a room where I keep the overall list of what this thing does, and how much it costs ("The Office"). I'm also going to keep a running update on where I am in the process ("The Laboratory"). All the design files should be in "The Library". Forgive me if I don't keep it up to date. I've got to make time for my other interests too...