Polyphonic Arduino Tone Generation With Mozzi Library

Last semester I took Dance Related Arts and had the opportunity to build three instruments that were incorporated as stage pieces in our performance. The theme for my group was to explore the impact of internet surveillance and the increasing presence of social media and technology in our lives.  One of the instruments I built was an array of 5 photocell resistors that each generated their own tone due their respective brightness. In order for the instrument to live on stage I had to either develop a bluetooth/wifi system for sending sensor data, or figure out a way to achieve sound synthesis/amplification directly on the Uno board. I chose the second. Here are a couple clips:

In order to synthesize multiple tones and have advanced control over their parameters, I used a library called Mozzi. Mozzi opens the Arduino environment up to things like multiple oscillators, envelopes, filtering, delay and reverb. It supports sensors like piezos, photocells and FSRs right out of the box and can be easily modified for any other sensor/trigger mechanism. 

My final design was an array of 5 photocells hooked into an Uno that was amplified via a 1/8inch connection to a JamBox. 

Here is the library : http://sensorium.github.io/Mozzi/