Circuit Playground Basic Interactive Music Firmware + Max Patch

In late 2022, I purchased a Adafruit Circuit Playground Bluefruit as part of a larger order of microcontrollers to test out for my classes. The Circuit Playground is a low cost, easily available microcontroller platform with a number of musically useful sensors on board, including accelerometer, a microphone (perhaps more realistically an SPL sensor), a light sensor, capacitive touch and two buttons. Additionally, with a little bit of soldering (or even just alligator clips) one could attach all manner of different inputs and outputs. Many of my students find starting out with microcontrollers to be extremely daunting, requiring large amounts of background knowledge before they can even get a single sensor reading out of a board, much less connect that sensor to any kind of musical parameter. My goal with this firmware and Max/MSP combo was to provide a simple firmware that would expose XYZ accel data, spl, light sensor and button press data to a connected computer, and then provide a Max patch that could take that data and turn it into OSC and MIDI. Additionally, I wanted there to be some nice reactive lighting on the board so that there was some degree of feedback. All of this could be accomplished just using the bare Circuit Playground board, so that my students don’t need to learn to solder to start making sound. This has proven to be a useful way for me to convey these concepts in class and get students working with the tech very quickly.

Since 2022, this firmware/software has evolved to provide a quick way for students to immediately get started with interactive controllers without spending much money, as well as a platform for them to add to when the want to branch off and do their own thing. It’s cheap enough that a whole laptop orchestra can have keep own sensors without going beyond what’s reasonable for books in a class, but still accurate enough that one can make some music. Plus, there are a bunch of capabilities waiting in store for adventurous students, such as a capacitive touch or any sensors available with the Adafruit Stemma system. I find that students interested in complex gestural control move on to devices like my colleague at Juilliard Mari Kimura’s Mugic Sensor, which is much more robust, accurate and road-worthy and that students interested in custom controllers eventually move on to building their own interfaces with whatever MCU fits their aesthetic and technological needs best. However, the Circuit Playground seems to be a pretty solid starting point and this firmware has been capable of creating some surprisingly complex, expressive music.

Download Link: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/jncuhklnhnqb8onb54630/h?rlkey=fcfj6h3uc8spjhazkx0nk7x7d&dl=0