MemPot is a small controller circuit where potentiometer (or any variable resisor) is read and recorded with PIC (16F819) microcontroller. PIC stores a sequence of values from the user turning the knob and plays the same sequence back via serially controlled digital potentiometer (DS1267) chip. The playback speed and recording buffer can be controlled. This is a handy tool for performing gestures with electronic instruments with variable resistors as controllers.

Same circuit can naturally be experimented with other variable resistors or analog sensors as inputs. LDR’s, bend sensors or even accelerometer movements could be recorded and played back similarly. If the resistance changes are not continuous but in steps, the playback resembles simple step sequencer. Follow the various experiments from the oikosulku-blog:

• example videos in oikosulku blog
• picture of the schematic (version 1.0, not tested!)
• schematic and board file in Eagle format (version 1.0, not tested!)
• PIC code (V1.0)

MemPot was developed by me and Dan for our circuit bending activities and to use as a workshop project on analog sound synthesis. We can hopefully include the making of MemPot for our next DRU workshop in July.

MemPot documented here.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 1st, 2007 at 1:54 am and is filed under DRU July 2007, Physical computing, PROTOTYPES, MemPot. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.