Sound Spiral Prototype – Testing Reed Switches/Shift Registers (12/06/2009)

There is a lot of wiring to do in order to have 72 unique switches on my sound spiral. My plan is to daisy chain 12 shift registers together, each one capable of inputting/outputting 8 unique addresses. Two of these addresses are wasted, as I only need 6 per panel, but still this will be quite efficient.

An initial test was done with 16 push button switches and 2 shift registers to see if I could get the arduino code working. Below is an image of this initial testing rig.



shift_register_test1



A second test was done to determine the minimum spacing between two reed switches in order to avoid activate multiple switches at one time. Below is the test rig and a short video.



reed_switch_test_1



Sound Spiral Prototype – Reed Switch Test from Noah King on Vimeo.


A third test was done to make sure a single panel from the 12-panel design was functioning. This was the first time I had ever broken free from the solderless breadboard and moved towards the soldered perf board, so there was a steep learning curve on how to manage wires and work efficiently. This first panel took nearly 3 hours to make, while the subsequent panels took more like one hour. Below is a video of this panel test.


Sound Spiral Prototype – Single Panel Test from Noah King on Vimeo.