Creating a Music Box with micro:bit

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The Story of Mike

“Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are…” Mike’s favorite class at school is music! On this day, after finishing music class, he learned the song “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”. When he returned home, he suddenly remembered what Teacher Xiaomi said about how programming could make the micro:bit board play beautiful music. Is that true? Mike began to study seriously and wanted to make the micro:bit board sing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”.

1× micro:bit main control board

1× ordinary headphones

1× MicroUSB connection cable

☑ STEP1: Hardware Connection

Connect the micro:bit main board to the computer using a data cable and plug the headphones into the headphone jack;

Connect the motion sensor module to the P1 interface of the expansion board.

Note: The headphone jack for audio playback occupies the P0 port, so the P0 port cannot be used while playing sound.

☑ STEP2: Write the Program

1. Drag the “play sound on P0 until done” block from the micro:bit module collection to the script area.

There are many built-in melodies to choose from in the play sound block. Here we choose “dadadadum”.

2. Write the program, the final reference program is as follows:

3. Try rotating the “small knob” right above the headphone jack on the expansion board to adjust the volume of the sound played by the micro:bit board.

☑ STEP1: Write a piece of music for “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”. First, try to write the code that can play the first line of the song. Let’s take a look at the sheet music for this song; the pitch and notes vary, and the required sound frequencies are different.

Taking the middle C as an example, the sound frequencies corresponding to the notes are shown in the table below (the number after the letter indicates the pitch of the note, e.g., C4 represents middle C, while C#2 indicates the sharp of C2).

☑ STEP2: Drag the “play note-C2-1 beat” block from the micro:bit module collection to the script area. This block can play different notes by adjusting the parameters (C2) and can adjust the beat by changing the parameter (1). (C2 refers to playing in bass, and you can change it to C4, G4, A4 for middle voice).

☑STEP3: After composing the tune for “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”, our micro:bit has learned to sing! But how do we make it smart? At this point, we need to use the motion sensor. It’s quite simple; we just need to add a conditional statement we learned before to make the intelligent music box work! Let’s take a look at the code:

Recommended Reading:

Creating with micro:bit Part 06— Electronic Candle

Creating with micro:bit Kit Part 05— Variable Speed Fan

Creating with micro:bit Kit Part 04— Hand-Controlled Signal Light

Creating with micro:bit Part 03— Flashing LED

Creating with micro:bit Part 02— Homemade Emoji Package

Creating with micro:bit Kit Part 01— Introduction

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