Virtual Tour Bike

Little Drummer Bike

Matthew Romaine
Andrew Roper
Jeff Walters

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Overview

This bike has been fitted with a few electrical sensors, which are then fed into a 12bit A/D converter, then to a BASIC stamp, which formats the now digital values into MIDI messages (4 separate channels of polyphonic aftertouch) and sends them through the MIDI port into a Linux PC running PD (Pure-Data). The functions of the PD patches are described in the following links: Virtual Tour Bike, Little Drummer Bike.

Sensors

Wheel Velocity -we used a DC motor backwards (by spinning it to get a voltage out instead of sending a voltage in to make it spin) to ascertain rear wheel velocity
Handle Bar Angle -we used a potentiometer mounted just below the handle bar axis in order to get the angle at which the handlebars/front wheel were turned.
Gear Shifter Position -because of the nature of our old-school bike, the gear shifter itself is a continuous controller, making it very difficult to pull discrete values out of it. We decided an FSR (Force Sensitive Resistor) on each side would be the best method for obtaining useful control values from the shifter.
Front Wheel Handbrake -we used an FSR mounted in a special PVC encasing to sense when and how hard the front break has been applied.