Robotic Music Glockenspiel
FEATURE
hen you think about using
electronics to create music,
you might think of drum
machines and synthesizers,
with their sound generation
technology hidden inside a
black box. However, electronics can also be used to
control acoustic instruments. In this tutorial, you will
learn how to build a robot arm with two motors
which can play a tune on a glockenspiel.
Our aim for this project is to take a glockenspiel
and add every possible extra feature we can think of.
In the main part of this tutorial, we will build a basic
robotic arm to play a preprogrammed melody. Once
that works, we will add other features such as
controlling the instrument from an external keyboard
or via the Internet of Things.The design will consist of a cheap glockenspiel
and an arm with a beater on the end, which will
rotate to reach the different notes. The arm’s
movement is powered by a large servo motor, while
the beater is powered by a small servo motor. The
servos are controlled by an Arduino Uno, and the
circuitry is housed on a breadboard so that we can
easily modify it later on. The glockenspiel, arm,
Arduino, and breadboard are all mounted to a piece
of plywood.
This project can be approached in a number of
different ways, depending on what resources are
available to you. We have 3D-printed quite a few of
the parts for this build, but if you don’t have access
to a 3D printer, you could achieve the same results
using wood, a bucket full of screws and, of course,
a roll of duct tape.Robotic Music Glockenspiel
FEATURE
W
Robotic
Music:
Glockenspiel
Build a musical instrument
that plays itself