First off, a disclaimer. As with much of my work as a sound designer, the ideas I develop (or at the very least the roots of the ideas that I develop) come from external sources. When I first learned of the gallery staff's issue with sound in their space, I figured that a motion detector would fit as a solution, but didn't know what piece of gear I could use to jump from close contact to a MIDI signal. I went to my professor for help, and he suggested the MIDI Solutions F8, a piece of rack mounted gear that takes close-contact footpedal signals as input, and outputs MIDI triggers based on user specified settings.

My professor is a big fan of the idea of "meta-work", the work one has to do in order to accomplish work. Today, when I received the components that I had specified for the triggering system, I began some meta-work of my own. Looking over the specs for the PIR sensor, I found a detail I had overlooked: the PIR needs 5V to operate. The Feather I've received operates at 3.3V.

After looking over the pinout in hopes of a solution, I then realized that there is a VBUS pin on the Feather that I believe will supply 5V to the PIR. Based on this datasheet, I am under the impression that the current draw of the PIR is low enough to be powered from the VBUS. I think I've gotten away with this oversight... More to come as I breadboard the circuit.