Jakob Oreskovich

15 posts

MIDI Drum Pad (aka Koala 1) Final Post – Reflections

April 26, 2016

Functionality Functionally, I’m really happy with how my project turned out. It syncs up seamlessly with any music software that accepts MIDI ins, and can transmit a variety of easy-to-change MIDI signals. The response time is also super quick – unnoticeable. Even when two pads are being struck at the same time, the Koala 1…

Final Report MIDI Drum Pad (aka Koala 1)

April 26, 2016

Jakob Oreskovich

Final Report Main Project 2016, Student Work, ZZ 2016

Inspiration I really like making music in Ableton Live. I’ve wanted to buy some MIDI drum pads for a while to use when making music, but I haven’t been able to justify the cost. So, I decided to make my own (hopefully for a fraction of the cost). When I began work on the MIDI…

MIDI Drum Pad Update 4/20/16

April 20, 2016

Jakob Oreskovich

Student Work, Update Weds April 20 2016, ZZ 2016

drum, MIDI, pad

This week, the full assembly of the drum pad came together. I knew that I wanted to use acrylic for the body of the assembly, but I wasn’t quite sure what the shape was going to resemble. So, I went to the local Salvation Army to start looking for some sort of body that I…

MIDI Drum Pad 4/13/16

April 13, 2016

Jakob Oreskovich

Student Work, Update Weds April 13 2016, ZZ 2016

I spent most of week trying to figure out what was wrong with my original code. Like I was talking about in my last post, whenever I strike one of the drum pads, the light will either stay on, or flash on and off at the rate that my void loop() takes to cycle. What…

MIDI Drum Pad 4/6/16

April 6, 2016

Jakob Oreskovich

Student Work, Update Weds April 6 2016, ZZ 2016

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This week my Teensy arrived. If you’re not familiar, the Teensy is an Arduino Powered microcontroller. It’s pretty cheap, at only $19.80, and it has quite a few perks. It has 34 I/O pins, and they’re all interruptable! If you’re not familiar, interrupts are a way of cutting back on the computations that your microcontroller…

MIDI Drum Pad Update/20th Century Art Movement Inspiration

March 31, 2016

Jakob Oreskovich

Impact of 20th Century design movements plus update Weds March 30 2016, Student Work, Update Weds April 6 2016, ZZ 2016

My Teensy just arrived in the mail today! This will allow be to start doing some of the coding that will be included in my final project. The Teensy uses the mBed platform for coding, so I may need to freshen up on the syntax for this platform, but I’m pretty confident I’ll be able…

MIDI Drum Pad – Constraints

March 30, 2016

Jakob Oreskovich

Student Work, Top 5 Constraints 2016, ZZ 2016

With a heavy load for senior design and mechatronics in March, I’ve fallen behind on my posts. Here are the top 5 constraints for my MIDI drum pad. Sensor Overlap My MIDI drum pad uses a number of piezoelectric sensors to detect when the drum pads are struck. These sensors are moderately sensitive – enough…

MIDI Drum Pad – Update 3/16/16

March 16, 2016

Jakob Oreskovich

Student Work, Update Weds March 16, 2016, ZZ 2016

This inspiration for my project was the Rock Band drum set. I read that these drum sets can be used for a bunch of different projects pretty easily, and have quite a few decent piezoelectric sensors inside. So, to start off, I disassembled the drum set to see what all was inside. The…

MIDI Drum Pad – PDR

March 1, 2016

Jakob Oreskovich

Main Project Design Review 2016, Student Work, ZZ 2016

For my project, I’ll be designing a MIDI drum pad. MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is just a standard of connectors, digital interfaces, and protocols that allow musical instruments to communicate with one another and computers. My midi drum pad will be able to sense when a drum head is being hit, and transmit that…

Inspiration – Jakob

February 28, 2016

Jakob Oreskovich

Main Project Inspirations 2016, Student Work, ZZ 2016

I got the idea for my project from a few of pre-existing products that are a bit outside of my price-range: namely, the Korg Wavedrum, Roland HandSonic, and Nord Pad. Each of these are electronic drum pads used for music production/performance. The price is mainly the result of internal sound-engines (much like a synthesizer) which provide…

Aspirations – Jakob

February 16, 2016

Jakob Oreskovich

Aspirations 2016, Student Work, ZZ 2016

For this semester’s aesthetics of design project, I want to pick a project which challenges me in areas I haven’t had as much of a chance to develop during my time at CU. I’m pretty confident in my coding abilities in Matlab, but outside of the Matlab suite, I start to feel lost. I haven’t…

Jakob’s Skills

February 8, 2016

Jakob Oreskovich

Skill Sets 2016

jakob, skills

As far as engineering student credentials go, I’m confident in my SolidWorks Skills, and slightly less confident in my Inventor skills. I’m very confident in my Matlab abilities, and am pretty good with all of the standalone ITLL station equipment (function generator, oscilloscope, power supply). I’m in mechatronics this semester, so I’m feeling pretty fresh…

TV Terrarium Completed Project

February 3, 2016

Jakob Oreskovich

Student Work, Upcycle Project Report 2016, ZZ 2016

TV Terrarium I started CU’s Super Smash Brothers club during 2013’s spring semester. It’s pretty well known that Super Smash Brothers players are notoriously picky about the input lag on monitors. Three of the consoles most commonly used (the Nintendo Gamecube, Nintendo Wii, and Nintendo 64) all output video via VGA standard definition cables. When playing…

TV Terrarium Progress

January 27, 2016

Jakob Oreskovich

Student Work, Upcycle Progress 2016, ZZ 2016

After the dawn of flat-screen tv’s Cathode ray television sets became a rare sight in the American household, but a dime-a-dozen in the junkyard. Despite how many of these tv’s began to make there way out of the living room and on to the curve, very few ended up in recycling centers. This cathode ray…

The Aesthetics of Kaiju

January 20, 2016

Jakob Oreskovich

Aesthetic Explorations 2016, Student Work, ZZ 2016

costume, film, foley, Kaiju, movie, movies, sound

Kaiju, translated from Japanese as “strange beast” , is a film genre centered around giant monsters attacking Japanese metropolises. The film credited as the first in the genre is also the most recognizable name: Godzilla. Directed in 1954 by Ishiro Honda, Godzilla spawned a genre of monster films which gave rise to famous monsters such as…