Andrew Burks

Another post I made for the RobOrchestra Website:

Description

Flutophone is one of the oldest members of the RobOrchestra. It’s seven fingers cover and reveal the seven holes on top of the recorder in order to specify particular notes.

Currently Flutophone is in a semi-functioning state. The instrument itself has gone out of tune over time, but it cannot be replaced by any recorder except one with the exact same hole spacing because the fingers are not adjustable.

Mechanisms

Flutophone’s fingers were originally made of cheap hardboard. After considerable use, the keyway on the hardwood gave out and fingers began to slip. Recently, the fingers have been replaced with laser-cut acrylic and reattached to the original sprockets. The sprockets are turned by servos mounted within the casing.

The air flow is controlled by a solenoid valve. The input of the valve is connected to a compressor running at approximately 30psi. The output is connected to the mouthpiece of the recorder, with a latex balloon serving as a buffer to stifle the initial surge in pressure when the airflow is first activated.

Logic

The entire robot is controlled by a single Arduino Duemilanove. It takes in serial commands from a master controller and interprets them as notes with a duration. It then sends a PWM signal to each of the 7 servos to position each of the 7 fingers properly. After a short delay to allow for the fingers to reach their position, it activates the solenoid valve. When the robot is not playing a note, its resting state is with all holes covered.

Images

Note the Arduino in the top right and the Solenoid Valve in the bottom left

The balloon seals perfectly over the mouthpiece

Overview: We are officially crazy

Animusic is a group that makes great computer animations involving “impossible” instruments playing great music.  While considering actuation mechanisms for the RobOrchestra Vibraphone project, somehow we decided it would be a good idea to do something similar to the instrument that takes center stage at 1:07 in Animusic’s “Pipe Dream”:

Details

Right now, 3/8″ diameter stainless steel balls are looking very promising.  Mike Ornstein, Dan Shope and I have subconsciously split up the work into 3 sections.  Dan is working on the mechanism to take the balls and dispense them onto the keys quickly and with a short reload time.  Right now, it appears that this will be accomplished with a group of DC motors.  Mike is working on the mechanism to lift the used balls back up and dispense them to queues leading into Dan’s mechanism.  This is most likely going to be done with an Archimedes screw and a paintball gun style dispenser.  I have been focusing on the structure of the whole mechanism and collecting the dispensed balls and funneling them to Mike’s mechanism.

The biggest problem I am facing with this design is the awkward hole arrangement in the keys.  I basically have two very awkward hole lines I need to support for both the naturals and the sharps.  A string pulled taut needs to go through the holes in the keys and the supports to hold up the key and let it vibrate naturally.  My initial concept involved about $60 of waterjet-cut 1/8″ ABS.  Here is a render of this initial design:

This concept was that with angled plates in front of the keys sloping back toward the keys, as well as slopes over top of those angled toward the center, I could funnel all of the ball bearings into a channel between the two sets of keys.  Unfortunately it takes up a whole sheet of plastic.

Future Concepts

Moving forward, I want to find a way to eliminate all of the unnecessary material in all 32 of those vertical supports.  A bar or two mounted along the path of the key mounts could allow me to build much smaller plastic mounts for each key.  Look forward to another post with more designs, and watch my friend’s blogs for updates on their portions of the project!