Liz's VPO Project

The first thing my organ teacher told me was the importance of timing. As usual, he was spot on. Week before last, I finished making the replacement piece for the bottom of the music rack. This isn't exacly a high-tech thing. I bought a piece of oak from Home Depot nearly exactly the size and shape I needed.  Cut to length and curved the outside corners, sanded stained and finished. I added a bit of moulding trip I found in the basement - the previous owner of our house did a lot of woodwork and drilled holes for the screws. tadah!  With 2 working manuals and pedals, and now a music rack at the right position, I have a functional practice organ!   There is a lot of work to do still - I have to finish the stop actions and the pistons, and add the LED strips for the pedal and music lights, install brackets and stuff to permanently mount the power supply and mac mini, and the wiring, in place.   That is all gravy, I can play it now and practice. Whi...

I've soldered all those wires and female headers onto my SAM units.   For once in my life, I'm going to do things the right way around and test all of them before installing them into the organ. I breadboarded a simple testing widget with male connectors matching the females on the SAM unites. The power and ground wires coming from off screen above are attached to the ASTRON SS-18 I got to power all these magnets. At the bottom is a UBEC 12v-5v converter for the LED. The circuit for the reed switch is entirely separate from the wiring for the magnets, so it can connect directly to the arduino running at a lower voltage than the magnets. I'm converting here to use just one power source, and avoid having to connect and program a microcontroller for a very simple test.  As you see, there are two little push buttons.  Push the left one and the stop flips on (down) and the green LED lights. Push the right one and it flips off (up) and the light goes out. Repeat a coup...