Scratch Day

 On December 1st I attended the Scratch Day at TC. I wasn't sure what to expect but I knew that people where going to be there because the registration was filling up quickly and some of the workshops were already at capacity by the time I signed up which was less than a day after registration opened.

 I opted to sign for a double session music-themed workshop that featured the Circuit Playground Express. This is a micro controller that has a lot of built-in capabilities like velocity, gravity, light and temperature sensors in addition to the 10 RGB LEDs on the front of the controller. It's form factor is similar to the LilyPad Arduino I had used before, but after looking at the pinout diagram I saw that this was a very versatile controller.

The theme of the session was to make a "trumpet" that responded to pitch and volume by tilting the controller on it's X-axis and Y-axis. While it is possible to program the controller with the Arduino IDE software we used the Makecode website that had a browser based block dragging coding format similar to what the microbit uses.

I followed the tutorial on Adafruit's website for this, and it was a lot like following some Lego instructions. The instrument itself leaves something to be desired as far as being a responsive musical tool, but I think that the controller could have the potential for some very creative musical projects.