This application automatically generates Arduino code for to control lights and music for animated town scene sets on mantle tops / tables. It works by parsing .wav files, looking for cue markers with specific formatted tags, and creating "routines" to control turning on and off lights within the various town scene homes based on the cue markers. These routines are used to generate code which will tell the Arduino how and when to cycle through the songs on an MP3 player as well as when to turn light pins on and off.
This program generates code for an Arduino Nano. It may work for other Arduino devices, however your mileage may vary. It can also interface with any MP3 player that supports file transfer via the Windows file explorer.
Drag .wav files with properly formatted tags onto the program. All recognized pins will be automatically selected for you. Then declare the pin used to start/turn on the MP3 player. If the town scene has custom pieces (such as an animated train set), declare the pin(s) and check the associated options. You will also need to declare the pin used for volumen control.
- Important: If your hardware turns lights on by sending a LOW value, be sure to check the
Swap On/Off Valuescheckbox.
The program reads cue markers from .wav files in order to determine when to turn light pins on and off. This means that you can mixdown multiple songs into one big audio file (called a routine).
Add cue markers wherever you want to turn a light on and set the duration to whenever you want the light to turn off. For example, if you add cue markers to the beginning of each song and make the cues span the duration of the respective songs, you will effectively get lights that turn on and off with each and every song.
Cue marker names must follow a strict naming convention in order for the program to properly parse them.
Put the name of the house (something unique) followed by a space and then the pin number for that house. For example: SomeLight A2. Make sure to use the same name whenever you reference that house multiple times within the same scene.
Names must not be the same as a Special Tag (see below) nor contain spaces or special characters (such as !,".'\][ etc...).
The following are special cue marker names that denote certain functions:
ALL_ON- Turns all light pins on (excluding train pins)ALL_OFF- Turns all light pins off (excluding train pins)
- Add some additional time to the end of each routine. This will ensure that the entire routine will run to completion. The amount of time to add depends on the inaccuracy of your MP3 timing.
The preferred method of importing is to simply drag the .wav file onto the program. You can also manually add extracted cue info by clicking the Add Routine button. However, this will make it impossible to automatically load the song files to the MP3 player.
If you have an MP3 player connected, you can automatically send audio files by clicking either the Send Code to Arduino or Upload Code button.
NOTE: You must save an MP3 version of your audio file with the same name and at the same file location of the corresponding
.wavfile.
In order to send code directly to the Arduino IDE and/or device, you must have the Arduino IDE installed and set up on your computer. Visit the Arduino website to set that up. Open the IDE and ensure the board type is set to Arduino Nano and the COM Port is properly set up.
You mus also set the PATH environment in Windows to recognize Arduino commands from the command line. Find the folder location that contains arduino.exe and add that path to your system PATH environment (For help on how to do that, check this guide).
NOTE: If you installed the Windows App version of Arduino IDE, it is probably in a hidden folder under
C:/Program Files/WindowsApps/ArduinoLLC....
Once your environment variable is good to go, you can open the IDE directly by pressing the Send Code to Arduino button. You can upload code directly to a connected Arduino device by clicking the Upload Code Directly button.
Pull requests are welcome. For major changes, please open an issue first to discuss what you would like to change.