Controlling a drum machine with the Arduino Opta
— June twenty fifth, 2024
Makers have lengthy requested the query “why hassle with an costly PLC after I can simply use an Arduino?” The reply comes all the way down to the priorities and wishes of commercial shoppers. In a manufacturing unit automation setting, the consumer will prioritize sturdiness, reliability, and serviceability over the one-time buy value of the gadget itself. However to show that Arduino’s skilled turnkey options are simply as straightforward to make use of as their developer-focused academic counterparts, Jeremy Cook dinner leveraged an Arduino Opta micro PLC to construct a drum machine.
This isn’t any previous drum machine that performs sound samples or synthesized notes, however reasonably a robotic drum machine that makes noise by banging on stuff like a real percussion instrument. Cook dinner might have constructed this with any Arduino board and some relays, however as an alternative selected to implement the Opta and new Opta Digital Growth. That’s strong sufficient for severe business and industrial functions, however remains to be easy to program with the acquainted Arduino IDE. Programmers can even use typical PLC languages if they like.
On this case, Cook dinner made noise with relays and solenoids. The Opta has 4 built-in relays and Cook dinner’s sketch flips one in every of them to make a sound analogous to a hi-hat. Cook dinner added an Arduino Professional Opta Ext D1608S module with its solid-state relays for the opposite two “drums.” A kind of fires a solenoid that faucets a small hand drum (the kick drum sound), whereas the opposite controls a solenoid that hits an influence provide enclosure (the snare sound).
Collectively, these three sounds can cowl the fundamentals of a drum observe. Cook dinner’s sketch is a drum sequencer program that shops every sound sequence as array, looping by them till turned off.
An Opta could also be overkill for a challenge like this one, however this does an excellent job of demonstrating the convenience at which an Arduino person can transition to skilled PLC work.