Now that the glockenspiel plays a number of Christmas carols, it’s time to put it in a box.
After a pile of routing I’m now nailing and gluing the Robotic Glockenspiel box together. Since this is a first prototype (the flat chime harp is too large to be practical), I’ve made the box sides from 3/4″ x 6″ “white wood” (fir or pine) instead of hardwoods, and made no attempt to conceal the nails.
Continue reading Gluing the Glockenspiel BoxIn my previous post, the robotic glockenspiel played its first tune. This post is an update on transcribing more tunes.
Continue reading Robotic Glockenspiel Now Plays 17 CarolsYup, it plays the Somerset Wassail!
It still needs a set of pushbutton controls and a wooden case, but it’s finished enough to play tunes.
Here’s the story since my previous post:
Continue reading The Robotic Glockenspiel Plays “Somerset Wassail”In my previous post I pointed to my Open Source code for the project. In this post, I describe the mounting of the solenoids to the frame.
Continue reading A Router is a Most Wonderful Power ToolIn my previous post I pointed to some sources of information about how to read Midi music files. I’ve now Open Sourced my working code.
I’m a total newbie at Git, but even so I’ve managed to create repositories for the Robotic Glockenspiel and the Arduino Midi File Reader library it uses. See My GitHub repositories for the current state of things.
Continue reading Robotic Glockenspiel and Arduino MIDI File Reader Library on GitHubIn my previous post I covered the Arduino-based circuit I built to strike the chimes. I’ve also, with a little effort, gotten the Sparkfun MicroSD shield to work with the Arduino Mega 2560, so I’m now in the thick of writing the software to read music files for the Robotic Glockenspiel.
Continue reading Successfully Reading a MIDI FileEarlier, I described how to build a frame for the glockenspiel. In this post, I cover the circuit that will strike each chime.
I’ve successfully tested the glockenspiel control circuit. It’s an Arduino Mega 2560, a Sparkfun Wifi Shield, and 19 repetitions of a simple solenoid control circuit.
Continue reading DIY Glockenspiel: the CircuitWhen I described my robotic glockenspiel project, a co-worker pointed me to the musical performances of Pat Metheny, which led me to LEMUR (League of Electronic Musical Robots), which made his instruments.
Check out the videos on LEMUR’s site (which unfortunately may be gone). Some of them remind me of early 20th-century experimental music (especially the one with the siren). Love it!
In my previous post, I crashed and burned with a glockenspiel frame that slipped while gluing. This post covers the version two, working frame.
Ok, it’s not robotic yet, but I now have a manually-playable, octave-and-a-fourth glockenspiel made from 1/2″ EMT conduit.
Continue reading My DIY Glockenspiel Works!In an earlier post I tuned the chimes. In this post, I find one way not to make a frame for those chimes.
I created the frame for the glockenspiel, with a square frame on the outside so that I could mark the inner part of the frame with 1″ lines, one per chime.
Continue reading If At First You Don’t Succeed…
