Having built the new controller and a prototype of the lighting system a few problems have been encountered.
Firstly the Maxuino object which deals with data transmitting both to and from the Arduino units can only hand data from one Arduino. What this means in terms of the project is that everything has to be ran from a single Arduino chip. Unfortunately this means that the original plan of having the buttons on the controller light up in accordance with the BPM of the samples is no longer feasible as there are not enough pins on a single chip to cover all of the functionality required.
To show that this was a possibility before this problem was encountered here is a video of the aforementioned feature working:
The second problem encountered is that the current draw from the relay (which deals with the switching on and off of the lamps powered by the mains) is too large for the Arduino to handle, resulting in the Arduino resetting itself after a short time. Having experimented with external power supplies and powering a separate Arduino to no avail, the lighting system will have to consist solely of LED lights.
Again just to showcase the system somewhat working, here is a test of the lamps before they shortly switch off:
Having upgraded to Max/MSP 7 however I have been able to utilise the Maxuino external object to it’s fullest potential. As my previous version of Max did not contain the live.slider object, I was unable to use the Pulse Width Modulation (this is where a digital signal is turned on and off to approximate analogue values) outputs on the Arduino to make the LEDs fade. This new feature will drastically change and improve my compositional approach due to the fact that instead of having a binary response to the audio material the LEDs can now perform in a more nuanced manner and even modulate in accordance with the volume of the audio material; therefore making the lighting system somewhat self operating.
Imagination & Junk 