umbrellas and changing colour shoes

the pComp mid term. our group has been working on getting an umbrella to translate rain drops into tones. We are connecting 6 piezo mics to the umbrella surface, when a mic is activated, we read in the signal and generate a square wave. Right now we are using the arduino to generate a tone, by increasing the frequency of the square wave. I've gotta say it sounds pretty awful. We've had some challenges. Volume control is one of them. We also want to be able to generate multiple tones so that they are additive, overlapping. The sound is still going to be pretty limited, but we are also considering hooking up pipes and solenoids, kind of like a wind chime, so that when a mic is activated, it activates it's corresponding solenoid which "bings" on it's corresponding metal pipe chime. Not sure yet if we are going to switch gears to this yet. We are still in testing faze. Here is a pic of some umbrella research and progress. I have also been working on another pcomp project from another class. This one also uses a piezo mic as a sensor except it works with colour changing shoes. Today I helped work on the code, determining when in relationship to time intervals and time between steps (speed) to determine resting rates and when to turn the shoe on. I like sneakers so this is a fun project.