so, do yourself a favor so you can follow along. Open this page up in a new tab:
http://wiki.moderndevice.com/pmwiki.php?n=MD.ListVoices

then hit the play button below to listen to 64 notes of the first bank of 128 different voices of the fluxamasynth shield. I just realized that I hit the record button while I was uploading a new firmware… so when you hear the “piano” start playing… that’s when you start reading down the list of voices on the other web page:
fluxamasynth_audio_samples_bank0.mp3

As copiously stated, I have no formal training in electronics, and I’ve reached a mature enough age that I can no longer accept an electronic component as a black box, so when I come across a device and can figure out how to use it without being able to locate instructions, i feel like it’s only right to make a drawing of it and try to explain my hypothesis for how it works.

With that being said, here’s my best guess at how the 10k slide potentiometers (sliders / slide pot) works:

the 3 pin slide potentiometer (10k)

The obvious control at the top sets the resistance. The voltage in (V+) and ground (V-) pins run inline with each other, and the resistance value is read from the pin adjacent to the voltage in pin. I’m using an Arduino to read the value, and in my case, i actually needed an additional resistor in front of the voltage in pin to limit the incoming current. When i hooked the slider up directly to the arduino, it didn’t work very well, acting way more like it was a logarithmic curve potentiometer than the linear curve pot I thought it was. About 2 minutes later, it was blistering hot. Too hot to touch, actually! So, I quickly disconnected it from the arduino and added a 10k resistor in front of the voltage in, and then it started behaving much more reasonably. The values I was getting from the 10k slider were not what I was expecting, so I’ll have to dial back on the current resistor from 10k to maybe 1k and see if that helps get the values from the slide pot more inline with my expectations.

Hey there, I’ve created a page for Rosco since I’ve revised it to version 2.0.

Rosco is an app that I’m working on that creates Open Sound Control (OSC) messages.  It can generate them with or without taking data readings from an Arduino.  Version 1 only had 6 sliders (one for each analog pin from the arduino), but now the new version includes being able to use 12 checkboxes (which correlate to pins 2-13 on an arduino).  I’ve revved the app, the quartz composer file, and the arduino code to all show examples how to get it going. Check it out!

http://www.sc-fa.com/blog/rosco/

Here’s a video I made of some of the construction steps:

arduino project box construction timelapse from stevecooley on Vimeo.