Hackmeetup notes: Bubble Bobble theme song on my Arduino piezo

Hackmeetup last night was a new attendance record.

It also featured Mark saying “I’m finished with this project!”, again. A Bluetooth scanner project, which was using Rhino to wrap Java APIs, again.

There were some new faces, and lots of electronics know-how in the house. I learnt a ton from Micke, who show-cased his company’s home automation product: a dimmer for your lights. And also an RFID reader which was autonomous; it had its own network cable and all. It’s out was sending xPL messages to the network, like “if you, the automated lamp, is off, turn on, if not, do nothing”. (Cave: My loose interpretation of this might be off.)

I continued my investigations into the Arduino kit I bought at Reboot. The thermistor and the photoresistor got some exercise, and the piezo was used to play sounds, and soon after that we found a piece of software that Clay Shirky had been in on making, which allowed us to write sheet music notes with a duration. Thus armed, we set out on a chase after the Mario tune. I wanted the sounds when we enters the caves, but David found the better song: the Bubble Bobble theme. Looking at sheet music, coding notes, took a while. But it played. I have a rotten video about it here.

Morgan took pictures with a real camera, and I guess he’ll link to them sometime.

PS: I was in a co-worker’s dream last night “You were talking in Italian with a Spaniard.” The dream had vampires in it, too.