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If music technology has ever made you dream of autonomous musical robots, crawling around the floor making sound like a Juilliard of mechanical insect prodigies, I’ve got great news for you.
While we’re on the subject of DIY electronics, here are some words of encouragement: the designer who made that fantastic drum machine robot making the rounds on the Web says he’s got a day job, and you, too, can do what he did.
Yes, you.
First, check out the autonomous, banging-on-stuff and sampling drummer robot pictured above, if you haven’t seen it yet:
Robot Drum Machine Roams, Samples, Bangs On Stuff
Creator Frits Lyneborg (aka fristl) writes CDM (after hurdling our spam filters — sorry about that):
Hi there - Yes I am out there, and next to me is some sticks & wires & some yellow belt tracks :D
Thanks for all the street-credit etc, thank you so very much. I hope my next robot / next weekend can live up to this, lol!
I am CEO of bee3.com - consider this brilliant company next time you want a website. Well - what else to do with my 15 minutes of fame, if not an ad for my company ;)
Anyway - it is very easy to make these robots, seriously; I do not have much of a clue, I just have plenty of glue. Hey - what a little fame can bring up in you, rhyming now, so muzical :)
i have made a walk through on how to make a quite capable robot, that uses all the same basics, and it only takes 2 hours once you got the parts send by mail.. letsmakerobots.com
Trust me; it is fun and easy to build robots!
Still skeptical? Here’s an even simpler design:
© Peter Kirn for Create Digital Music, 2008. | Permalink | No comment
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The Atari Punk Console is one of DIY sonic electronics’ all-time greatest hits. Designed by Forrest M. Mims III — the brilliant electronics artist and engineer whose hand-drawn books were once promoted in Radio Shack — the “Stepped Tone Generator” as it was originally called is an excellent circuit for first-timers or those wanting something simple and adaptable. You can read up on the APC over on Wikipedia, with some good links to what the circuit does.
The Cracklebox is, similarly, a “greatest hit” of electrical noisemaking, a simple, self-contained synthesizer with speakers.
Put them together and add some comic art, and you’ve got the creation you see above, created by Massimiliano Farnea, aka maxfarnea. It’s been watching over the site from the CDM Flickr pool (which has various other stuff like this, as does the pool for our friends at MAKE and some other Flickr pools). So I had to know more. Here’s a quick preview from its creator — and the story behind that fantastic illustration:
© Peter Kirn for Create Digital Music, 2008. | Permalink | 2 comments
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