Musical Fountain - Olin College Principles of Engineering project

This is a Fall 2009 Principles of Engineering project by Jeffrey Atkinson, Hye Ji Kim, Chad Son, and Lexi Tsoi at Olin College.
The fountain is composed of six pumps that are controlled by a PIC microcontroller. On our laptop off-screen, the music is analyzed in real-time by a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) script running in MATLAB. C code compiled in MATLAB takes the resulting data and sends it to the PIC, which outputs PWM signals to the pumps and an array of LEDs. The pump furthest to the left represents the highest frequencies, and the one furthest to the right represents the lowest frequencies. There is a slightly noticeable delay between the music and the fountain attributable to computing time required for the FFT, as well as the speed response of the pump motors.

The song the fountain is responding to is Mannington #9 by Rachel Eddy, thanks very much to Rachel for providing permission to upload this!

More info: http://students.olin.edu/2012/jatkinson/poe/

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Olin
• College
• Engineering
• Musical
• Fountain
• PIC
• microcontroller
• MATLAB
• FFT
• Rachel Eddy
• Mannington #9

[Zoysiamo]

...(sorry I'm not allowed to post the links). We didn't know anything about motor control before starting the project, so I'm sure you'll be fine! If you have more specific questions or need more explanation I'll try to help as best I can!

[Zoysiamo]

We used DC motors by simulating a PWM signal (effectively, adjusting the duty cycle of each motor), so I think that your circuit would be quite different. If the solenoid valves are digital, I'd assume they could basically be controlled by the digital pinouts of the PIC, but I've never used solenoids before. If you haven't seen other similar projects, they might be useful: search for "fountain solenoid valves" and "pic microcontroller fountain" and click on the Cornell and MIT links.

[aliamama]

i need your help to develop prototype of musical fountain to control 5 digital solenoid valve by using 1 pump to play mp3 from vb interface with pic16f877a. am undergraduate student from malaysia....i dont know much about to built control circuit