Friday, October 15th, 2021
Documentation Written by Mohamed Ihsan.
Project completed by Isaiah Bayas and Mohamed Ihsan.
Image from Nintendo EAD/Nintendo
The project idea came, in my case, from being kind of a Gaming Geek. The Legend of Zelda is one of my favorite gaming franchises, and Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is perhaps the most iconic of Zelda Games. It just so happened that a core symbol of this game is, well, the Ocarina. And so, a project idea was born!
One of the first images I drew incorporating this idea
The idea was to replicate an actual Ocarina, but electronic style. It would utilize button sensors instead of holes that cover with your finger to manipulate wind with - so a perfect, COVID-friendly wind instrument! Isaiah Bayas, a peer of mine from class, was also interested in making instruments, so we joined forces to create this instrument.
our circuit as it looked after we finally got it working.
The circuitry was rather simple - it involved connecting LED lights, force sensitive resistors, and a speaker to different inputs in an Arduino Nano attached to a breadboard. We then tested our circuit on the Arduino software, to ensure that our buttons and LED's worked as they should. To make the note sounds in our instrument, we utilized the Arduino Tones library.
Our first iteration of the circuit ran into problems, because our lights were too dim, and our speaker wasn't making sounds at all (but at least the lights responded to the FSR's being pressed). We re-made the circuit, using both more voltage, and slightly lower resistance, and found that this time, it worked as we intended.
The inspiration for our Ocarina Shape
Finally came the business of the shell of our instrument. This seemed like both the "fun" part, yet also one of the most challenging parts. The challenge came primarily from the fact that a traditional ocarina was ovular in shape. Our response to research different kinds of ocarina shapes, and found that another common one was the block-like inline ocarina. For the scope of our project, we decided to settle for this kind of Ocarina.
We considered all kinds of materials for the making of our Ocarina body, ranging from cardboard, to plywood and foam materials. We even considered trying to see if we could get our hands on some clay.
The first approach we had to make this shape was to build it out by hand (inspired by how other made their Ocarina). We found, however, to be quite time-consuming, and not to look as nice as some of the more artisanal Ocarinas we saw online. We then, in the nick of time, resorted to using a laser cutter to make our Ocarina body.