Building String Instruments with No Strings?

sansglitch asks: "Well, as the end of the academic year rolls around, I come before the Slashdot community to ask for a little help on a research project thats hopefully going to allow me to leave my sleepy suburban high school with a bang. Inspired by a 6th grader's science textbook, I have undergone construction on a Laser Harp (that is, a harp of sorts in which I've replaced the strings w/ beams of light). For the brain of this small midi-producing gadget, I've opted for a PIC micro-controller. I was hoping that someone with experience in dealing with this kind of chip setup might help with the finer points of integrating it into this monster. Do people still code for PIC's these days?" Now that is actually a cool idea for a project. Good luck with it, sansglitch!

Comments

Plenty of people are using PICs

[Matt_Bennett]

Plenty of people are using PICs, even putting them in new designs (like me- I use them both for play and professionally)- not everything needs the power of a 32 or 64 bit OS. You can get a 12C508 (an 8 pin microcontroller with 0.5K of program space) in quantity for about $0.50USD each! You can make something with a PIC that is extremely reliable- which is exactly what an embedded system is- it's not about being a computer, it's about doing some function. A PIC is maybe a *bit* low powered for doing heavy duty MIDI, since you don't have a lot of time between bits, but people have done it.- check out this site for a bunch of MIDI/PIC related resources.

For general PIC support, there are a couple active mailing lists, the big one is the piclist, and there is a website that will give you plenty of (3rd party) info on the PIC and the mailing list. There is even some GNU/Linux work being done with Linux, try out Gnupic. Of course, you can always go to the manufacturer.