I feel as though this project may arise some complications, but I am willing to give it a try regardless. What I would like to do is to somehow have a room filled with metal balls (each varying in size, probably made up of strips of sheet metal) and have visitors roll them so that when a certain ball hits another, a specific tone is emanated. When that ball rolls on and hits different ball, a different tone will sound. Ideally I would like to have it emanate a sound that is similar to a hang drum. I have limited experience with photocells, but I would very much appreciate what materials/methods you all think might work best according to this project proposal. Any advice is welcome!
This sounds more like you would need image processing + motion tracking, but an Arduino can't do image processing, so you would need a small computer with image processing software.
If they're metal balls large enough for people to roll,the mass is enough to generate a signal on an accelerometer upon impact with another ball. In order for one ball to "know" which ball it has impacted , each ball would have to have an rf transmitter that transmits it's ID # , which is decoded and used to determine the correct note for an impact between those two balls.
You need to have big balls to attempt this project..... XD
Hahaha, yes I figured this one might be a little tough... I initially thought if anything, I could cheat it a little and have photocells scattered on the floor of the room, so when the ball rolls over the photocell it emits a sound. Its a different idea that I'm not particularly fond of, but it might be a simpler approach.
Does each ball of the same size make the same sound? What about if two different ball sizes collide, do you hear two different sounds or just one based on the combination?