Smart Systems

Conceptual Statement

I tried playing trumpet once years ago, and I found I have to blow really hard to get it work, and I hardly get it work. This was a little piece of memory of my childhood, but made me to think about improving the trumpet. With this idea in mind, I started making the digital trumpet with Arduino. Buttons, microphone and slider are used to achieve the basic functions of trumpet. The buttons are the valves of trumpet, with combinations of the three buttons, it determines which note to play. The microphone is the mouthpiece of trumpet, it detects a small amount of air which user blows, so that users do not need to blow very hard to get it work. This is the biggest improvement, which made it easier for beginners to play. The slider is the tuning slide of trumpet, it is used to change the pitches of octaves. 7 different pitches could be chose for each octave. Arduino Tone() library is used to produce octaves. As a whole system, the Arduino Trumpet plays a note according to the buttons combination and pitch selection. For the fabricating, I felt boring if I just put everything inside a little black box. Therefore I decided to implement the system into a glove. Three magnetic switches were installed in the Grooming, Middle and Ring finger of the glove. Some small pieces of strong magnet was installed in the Thumb finger of the glove. According to gestures of user made, the system could produce octaves. Microphone and slider are also installed into the glove to keep the basic functions of the trumpet. As a result, this glove becomes a invisible instrument, as user does not have to hold anything in hand while playing. The system adopted all the basic functions from a physical trumpet, but implemented with a glove and it is easier and more fun than a physical trumpet for users to play with.