Music Synthesizer with Touchpad and Infrared Included

This music synthesizer project utilizes a laptop touchpad and an infrared distance sensor to control tone, volume, and decay length of musical notes.

The device offers a variety of options for generating musical notes since while operating in one of six modes wherein a user can produce interesting music by as little as swiping a finger. The music qualities can be controlled using a touchpad and a distance sensor. The distance sensor will function as the volume control.

The touchpad can provide an output variability in two dimensions by controlling different sound characteristics depending on which of six modes of play the instrument was currently in. The six modes of play include standard, chords, harmonics, double harmonics, decaying harmonics, and sinusoidal sound. The default mode is standard mode upon restart which consists of four octaves of individual notes that can be played according to touchpad positioning. By quickly gliding the finger across the touchpad in either the x or y direction, the user can select a new mode.

The sound generation, where DDS was used, and touchpad interfacing are using two ATmega64 MCUs which communicate with each other via SPI communication.

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