Sound as a trigger and Solenoids

After a review of the videos being produced by the class, I asked the Core group to build up a program to control the tripping of a solenoid attached to a rudimentary lever arm.  After a couple of dead ends they got it to trigger.  Just for fun I added onto the patch the ability to trigger the device by using a microphone and loud sounds.  This clip shows just that.

The solenoid is a 12volt Dc device tied directly to a wall wart power supply.  This device is plugged into the Elation Cyber Pak.  When the AC channel of the pack turns on, the solenoid is powered and thus pulls shut.  Even so, it may not have the power needed for the student project I had envisioned, plus it is very noisy making a loud "thunk" when tripped.  Regardless, the thing is a riot.  It was especially entertaining when shouting for a while when one of the full time faculty (Valerie Mendoza) stuck her head in through the side door, no doubt wondering what the relative shouting and other vocalizations we were doing to trigger the thing.

The cool object for the night was the "split" object allowing a range of numbers to be selected.  The other odd discovery was the arm not triggering when the lights were off (we had attached a lit candle to the arm end).  We found that the Miditron was still active with a photo cell sensor.  This overrode the audio trigger.  Another good nights work.    Next will be motors.