Trying to have the illusion of playing two tones at once

[gcjr]

@drowsyflakes

That was meant to preventing it from switching between the two buzzer when chorusFrequency is 0.

don't understand why you would switch. just set the frequency for each buzzer. If it's zero, it shouldn't do anything

[gcjr]

@drowsyflakes

I thought if I checked (currentMillis - start Millis), it would make a never ending loop unless

guess you haven't looked at the code in post #11. loop() is repeatedly called. It can check if the timer has expired and do something.

[J-M-L]

You can do it only once is what I meant,

For example instead of

@drowsyflakes

while (currentMillis - startMillis <= switchInterval){

            if (chorusFrequency == 0.00){
              noTone(chorusPin);
              tone(mainPin, mainFrequency);
              currentMillis = millis();
            }
            
            if (chorusFrequency > 0.00){

              if (pinSwitch == true){
                noTone(chorusPin);
                tone(mainPin, mainFrequency);
                currentMillis = millis();
              }
              
              if (pinSwitch == false){
                noTone(mainPin);
                tone(chorusPin, chorusFrequency);
                currentMillis = millis();
              }

            } 
          }

You could do

        while (currentMillis - startMillis <= switchInterval){
            currentMillis = millis();
            if (chorusFrequency == 0.00){
              noTone(chorusPin);
              tone(mainPin, mainFrequency);
            } else if (pinSwitch){
                noTone(chorusPin);
                tone(mainPin, mainFrequency);
              } else {
                noTone(mainPin);
                tone(chorusPin, chorusFrequency);
              }
          }

And noTone() is not even necessary as it will be done automatically by the other tone() command (if it’s the built in function)

So could be as short as

while (millis() - startMillis <= switchInterval) {
  if (chorusFrequency == 0) tone(mainPin, mainFrequency);
  else if (pinSwitch) tone(mainPin, mainFrequency);
  else tone(chorusPin, chorusFrequency);
}

But as I said I don’t know why you would call tone repeatedly

[drowsyflakes]

I didn't think tone() could run on multiple pins at the same time? Haven't been working with arduinos for very long, I saw the code you posted but have to look at it for a bit longer to understand what's going on. I wasn't trying to purposely ignore it, I do appreciate the help

[qubits-us]

@gcjr

is a frequency of zero the same as noTone()? is the above test necessary?

on esp32 tone with a zero freq, logs an error and calling noTone with out a tone playing also logs an error..

would never had notice them but I was debugging the core..

added a non-blocking tone music player to nesso mazes..

~q

[drowsyflakes]

I see what you mean now. Not needing noTone() makes sense now, too. I thought I needed to turn it off each time before moving to the next tone(). The code looks much better, too

[gcjr]

@drowsyflakes

I didn't think tone() could run on multiple pins at the same time?

if it can't why not just use one pin?

[J-M-L]

@gcjr

why not just use one pin?

That was my question here

@J-M-L

Also unless they have different physical properties there is no need to have two buzzers as you alternate between them anyway .

[drowsyflakes]

I honestly don't have a good explanation for using two. Was desperation to try getting this to work? Will definitely switch to just using one if it's not necessary.

[J-M-L]

Seems the tone library can get your two sounds in parallel so if that’s what you need you should go for that

[drowsyflakes]

Yeah I'll have to play around with it later now that I know it exists lol. It'd be a lot easier than what I've been trying to do.

[drowsyflakes]

char s [90];
char p [20];
char q [20];
char r [20];

dtostrf (key,  8, 2, q);
    dtostrf (freq, 8, 2, r);
    sprintf (s, "chorusFreq: %-3s %s Hz, octave %2d, key %s",
                                    note, r, octave, q);
    Serial.println (s);

Just to make sure I'm understanding this correctly, are 's, p, q, r' just meant to store the values for 'Serial.println (s)'? Haven't used 'dtostrf' or 'sprintf' before. What's the purpose of the 8 & 2 in this part? Is it similar to 'fixed' and 'setprecision' in C++ except for input?

    dtostrf (key,  8, 2, q);
    dtostrf (freq, 8, 2, r);

[gcjr]

sprintf doesn't support the "%f" specifier. dtostrf() generates a formatted string for a float/double. The 8, 2 are equivalent to "%8.2f".

dtostrf (freq, 8, 2, r); formats a float to have 8 characters and 2 decimal digits into the r char array

[J-M-L]

@gcjr

sprintf doesn't support the "%f" specifier

Assuming OP is on a small AVR indeed.

@drowsyflakes - could you confirm which Arduino you are using?

[drowsyflakes]

Currently using an arduino uno for this project

[build_1971]

@drowsyflakes

if (chorusFrequency == 0.00){

Apart from the need if this chieck: do not test a float with ==.
A very small rounding error may cause this to be never true....
Always test if a float is in a certain interval...

float delta =0.001;
if (-delta < myFloat and myFloat < delta) {
{
    doSomething;
}

[J-M-L]

@drowsyflakes

arduino uno

So then indeed %f is not supported.

[jim-p]

@drowsyflakes

Thank you! I didn't know there was a tone library, I might have to just switch to using that and avoid some pain

You are welcome.
Have fun!

[J-M-L]

@build_1971

A very small rounding error may cause this to be never true..

This is true in general and a good practice.

In this case though the value comes from the frequency calculation function where OP does

@drowsyflakes

if (note[0] == 'N'){
    frequency = 0.00;
  }

And as IEEE-754 represents the value zero exactly (the bit pattern for +0 is an exponent field full of zeros and a mantissa full of zeros. The sign bit alone distinguishes +0 from −0. In both cases the numerical value is zero without approximation) so testing == 0 in his case will work.

[GolamMostafa]

@J-M-L

The sign bit alone distinguishes +0 from −0.

Very interesting!

I did not try before to examine the exact IEEE-754 binary representations of +0.0, 0.0, and −0.0. This time, being inspired by your post, I have experimented and have found the following:

for +0.0 : 0x0;
for 0.0  : 0x0
for -0.0 : 0x80000000 (MSB =1 indicates sign bit)