Painting the background

My most recent work involved painting the watercolor background.   I have chosen Ampersand Aquabord for this in a 22x30" size, as it is firm and will allow me to drill holes for the fiber optics, as well as for mounting the glass in front and the electronics in back.  It is a wonderful surface to use watercolor on as it keeps the colors vivid.  My conundrum is that I need the background to be dark and unobtrusive, but not too dark, as the piece will need to be attractive both during the day and night.  I was going for a neutral gray, and one way that watercolorists make gray is to use a combination of ultramarine blue and a burnt sienna.  One of the attractive qualities of aquabord is that it granulates (separates in to grains) nicely, but in this case the greys break down into the composite blues and browns. I questioned whether this would detract from the overall design, but decided to go with it.

I am painting an abstract cross-hatch pattern, as shown here in the first half of the first layer:

After the second layer:

The fused glass pieces and fiber optics will go in front of this backdrop.

The Microphone

Since I am using so many sensors and so many LEDs and fiber optics being driven by LEDs, I may run out of GPIO pins.  Therefore, I didn't want to use a HAT-based microphone, and instead opted to use a USB microphone.   I chose the Adafruit 3367.  The reason for the microphone is to detect ambient sounds coming from the environment and adjust the artwork accordingly.  My hope was to do some basic analysis of the sounds (i.e. "loud conversation" or "empty room" ) using some sort of Fourier transform, but this is going to be too complicated, and my goal the last couple of weeks has been to focus on KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid).  Therefore, my new goal is to simply measure the amplitude of the audio sample and use this loudness factor in determining one input to the artwork algorithms.

I am trying to do this in python, and the guide I was using is this:

https://makersportal.com/blog/2018/8/23/recording-audio-on-the-raspberry-pi-with-python-and-a-usb-microphone

However, it did not go as planned, and I encountered errors:

pi@tableau:~ $ lsusb

Bus 001 Device 010: ID 8086:0808 Intel Corp.

Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0424:7800 Standard Microsystems Corp.

Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0424:2514 Standard Microsystems Corp. USB 2.0 Hub

Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0424:2514 Standard Microsystems Corp. USB 2.0 Hub

Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

Okay, the microphone is found by the OS, but the python library can't:

pi@tableau:~ $ sudo python3

Python 3.5.3 (default, Sep 27 2018, 17:25:39)

[GCC 6.3.0 20170516] on linux

Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

>>> import pyaudio

>>> p = pyaudio.PyAudio()

ALSA lib confmisc.c:1281:(snd_func_refer) Unable to find definition 'cards.bcm2835_alsa.pcm.front.0:CARD=0'

ALSA lib conf.c:4528:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such file or directory

ALSA lib conf.c:5007:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such file or directory

ALSA lib pcm.c:2495:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM front

ALSA lib pcm.c:2495:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.rear

ALSA lib pcm.c:2495:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.center_lfe

ALSA lib pcm.c:2495:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.side

ALSA lib confmisc.c:1281:(snd_func_refer) Unable to find definition 'cards.bcm2835_alsa.pcm.surround51.0:CARD=0'

ALSA lib conf.c:4528:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such file or directory

ALSA lib conf.c:5007:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such file or directory

ALSA lib pcm.c:2495:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM surround21

ALSA lib confmisc.c:1281:(snd_func_refer) Unable to find definition 'cards.bcm2835_alsa.pcm.surround51.0:CARD=0'

ALSA lib conf.c:4528:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such file or directory

ALSA lib conf.c:5007:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such file or directory

ALSA lib pcm.c:2495:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM surround21

ALSA lib confmisc.c:1281:(snd_func_refer) Unable to find definition 'cards.bcm2835_alsa.pcm.surround40.0:CARD=0'

ALSA lib conf.c:4528:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such file or directory

ALSA lib conf.c:5007:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such file or directory

ALSA lib pcm.c:2495:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM surround40

ALSA lib confmisc.c:1281:(snd_func_refer) Unable to find definition 'cards.bcm2835_alsa.pcm.surround51.0:CARD=0'

ALSA lib conf.c:4528:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such file or directory

ALSA lib conf.c:5007:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such file or directory

ALSA lib pcm.c:2495:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM surround41

ALSA lib confmisc.c:1281:(snd_func_refer) Unable to find definition 'cards.bcm2835_alsa.pcm.surround51.0:CARD=0'

ALSA lib conf.c:4528:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such file or directory

ALSA lib conf.c:5007:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such file or directory

ALSA lib pcm.c:2495:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM surround50

ALSA lib confmisc.c:1281:(snd_func_refer) Unable to find definition 'cards.bcm2835_alsa.pcm.surround51.0:CARD=0'

ALSA lib conf.c:4528:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such file or directory

ALSA lib conf.c:5007:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such file or directory

ALSA lib pcm.c:2495:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM surround51

ALSA lib confmisc.c:1281:(snd_func_refer) Unable to find definition 'cards.bcm2835_alsa.pcm.surround71.0:CARD=0'

ALSA lib conf.c:4528:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such file or directory

ALSA lib conf.c:5007:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such file or directory

ALSA lib pcm.c:2495:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM surround71

ALSA lib confmisc.c:1281:(snd_func_refer) Unable to find definition 'cards.bcm2835_alsa.pcm.iec958.0:CARD=0,AES0=4,AES1=130,AES2=0,AES3=2'

ALSA lib conf.c:4528:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such file or directory

ALSA lib conf.c:5007:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such file or directory

ALSA lib pcm.c:2495:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM iec958

ALSA lib confmisc.c:1281:(snd_func_refer) Unable to find definition 'cards.bcm2835_alsa.pcm.iec958.0:CARD=0,AES0=4,AES1=130,AES2=0,AES3=2'

ALSA lib conf.c:4528:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such file or directory

ALSA lib conf.c:5007:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such file or directory

ALSA lib pcm.c:2495:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM spdif

ALSA lib confmisc.c:1281:(snd_func_refer) Unable to find definition 'cards.bcm2835_alsa.pcm.iec958.0:CARD=0,AES0=4,AES1=130,AES2=0,AES3=2'

ALSA lib conf.c:4528:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such file or directory

ALSA lib conf.c:5007:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such file or directory

ALSA lib pcm.c:2495:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM spdif

ALSA lib pcm.c:2495:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.hdmi

ALSA lib pcm.c:2495:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.hdmi

ALSA lib pcm.c:2495:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.modem

ALSA lib pcm.c:2495:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.modem

ALSA lib pcm.c:2495:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.phoneline

ALSA lib pcm.c:2495:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.phoneline

ALSA lib confmisc.c:1281:(snd_func_refer) Unable to find definition 'defaults.bluealsa.device'

ALSA lib conf.c:4528:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such file or directory

ALSA lib conf.c:4996:(snd_config_expand) Args evaluate error: No such file or directory

ALSA lib pcm.c:2495:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM bluealsa

ALSA lib confmisc.c:1281:(snd_func_refer) Unable to find definition 'defaults.bluealsa.device'

ALSA lib conf.c:4528:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such file or directory

ALSA lib conf.c:4996:(snd_config_expand) Args evaluate error: No such file or directory

ALSA lib pcm.c:2495:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM bluealsa

connect(2) call to /tmp/jack-0/default/jack_0 failed (err=No such file or directory)

attempt to connect to server failed

>>>

So, plenty of work to do!

Next, work on the circuits for the motion detectors, and the circuits for the LEDs.