EUROPYTHON 2010

Post date: 15-mar-2014 8.33.27

Old mechanical instruments are still alive... but they need to be programmed! No CDs, no MP3 recorders, no hard disks to store musics. Only punched cards. Nowadays, it's unthinkable (and quite boring) to manually punch cards. Music composers should concentrate on conceiving and arranging music instead of punching cards. Python and Arduino (a well-known open-source physical computing platform) make a good team to conceive and realize multi-axis machine controllers and user interfaces able to program and control low-cost machine tools. A low-cost card puncher has been designed, realized and will be presented during the talk.

Presentation outline:

• a short description of Arduino main characteristics;
• communication mechanisms between Python and Arduino;
• machine control functionalities (velocity/position control, axes position reset, motor and encoder integration);
• program flow management, communication synchronisation and machine error management;
• MIDI files to machine program generation.
• A final demonstration of the card puncher functioning will be shown.

Click here to see the conference presentation.