Jambox

Project Description

Plato once wrote, “Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue.” Through music we express who we are. It is an almost universal experience that connects us all. To explore how music can bring us together, we will be designing and constructing a MIDI controlled Jambox. A Jambox is a social music creation device with which people of all musical abilities can come together, manipulate sound, and create music naturally.  We will be using the engineering design process and new technological tools to thoughtfully design and build a Jambox that has a super intuitive user interface.  We will then encourage others to express themselves together by interacting with our Jambox.

Essential Questions

  • How can a social music creation device encourage people with a range of musical abilities to create musical art?

  • How can the engineering design process be used to coordinate the efforts of many individuals?

Learning Goals

What You Will Be Able to Explain and Do:

Concepts – What we will be able to explain

  • Electricity and circuitry

  • Hyper-collaboration

  • Criteria based design

  • Digital music

Skills – What we will be able to do

  1. Create models and manufacturing drawings

  2. Project management

  3. Pugh chart analysis

  4. Soldering/Wiring

  5. Arduino-based coding