Foot Piano

In this project we constructed a group of buttons which can be used with your foot to play some music. We used ultrasonic sensors to sensor reliably the position of the top part of the button and autocalibration in case it looses height with time.

This project was made during the 2022 EDW MIT Edgerton Center by the following people:

• Emilia
• Clara
• Oriol Bisquert
• Archin
• Hrushi
• Harri
• Joel Garcia

• Wood
• Foam
• Arduino Mega
• Arduino Jumpers
• DB9 Connectors (Female and Male)
• Ultrasonic Sensors (1 for each Button)

To start with, each button consists of two pieces of wood, one on top and the other on the bottom. The top one will be where you step on and the bottom one will support the ultrasonic sensor.

Our pieces of wood measure 12 inches by 12 inches, but the dimensions can be changed if needed.

Also, we will need a hole in the middle of the piece of wood for the Ultrasonic sensor mount, so in half of the wood (only those pieces which will be at the bottom), we will cut a hole of dimensions 2 by 1.5 Inches

For each piece of wood we will need 4 soft pieces of foam and 8 harder ones. They should be positioned as shown in the image above.

The softer ones are there to allow an easy press on the button and the harder ones ensure the two pieces of wood do not collide with each other.

Download and 3D print the Ultrasonic sensor mount, then fit your ultrasonic sensor inside (It might be tight, but it fits) and stick the mount with hot glue on top of the hole on the wood.

Then, as an optional thing, you can add a mount for the DB9 connector, which you can stick just in front of the Utrasonic mount

Ultrasonic Sensor Mount Link: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5448245

DB9 Mount: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5448249

Then proceed to cable manage, which you can do either by soldering or using breadboards.

For each sensor/button you will need to solder a DB9 Male and female to a 9 pin cable, male at one side, female at the other. Then on the side of the arduino, use a male DB9 connector and male arduino jumpers soldered into them and a female DB9 soldered with female arduino jumpers connected to the ultrasonic sensor.

All code can be downloaded in the following link and it is explained over there.

https://github.com/Newtoniano20/Foot-Piano

Upload "sensor.ino" into the arduino and then Connect your arduino into your computer and run the main file in the code.

Enjoy Playing music!