Hi everyone,
I stumbled on to Andrew Kilpatrick's Laser Harp recently and got really excited about what I saw. Recently I posted something about wanting to use photoelectric eyes as my "sensors of choice" to trigger notes on a synthesizer, but they were too expensive. Well, the basic architecture of this design is pretty much the same thing at a very low cost. Sweet!
What I intend to do is expand the design of the harp into a 10 x 12 grid so that it can provide simultaneous control of 10 octaves. The triggering of a note depends on the intersection point of an interrupted beam, alot like keystrokes on a matrix keypad. A position along the 12 unit axis determines the note in the given octave, while a position along the 10 unit axis determines the octave. Sounds simple enough, but I want to be able to have more than one note triggered at once, which could become problematic, seeing as how it is conceivable that all beams could be interrupted at once, yielding 120 simultaneously triggered notes. I don't think this is possible on any synth, but I'm still uncertain.
How should I handle this? Simply duplicate the architecture that Kilpatrick made ten times and then use a master PIC to poll the other twelve, or what? I'm a little lost as to why he uses two lasers instead of just one all the way through. Anyway, I'm a little lost here as to what I should change or improve, so show me the light if you can.
Many thanks in advance,
+Q__