This video is [Jim]’s 12 year old [Adam] describing a modded a set of electronic christmas bells that take midi input thanks to a propeller controller. Looks like [Jim] helped a bit, but it looks like a great way to introduce young minds to hardware hacking. You can grab details on the board design here.
Wow.. We had a set of those when I was a kid. I think my mom still has them. Too bad that ripping the set up would have incurred her wrath.
Maybe I’ll do it now…
Posted at 8:46 am on Apr 3rd, 2008 by tehchaymes
THAT IS REALLY AWESOME i wish my parents would give me that kind of stuff i could never afford anything that complicated
Posted at 7:33 pm on Apr 3rd, 2008 by drew
So thats how nerds are made.
I agree, propeller!?
Posted at 8:34 pm on Apr 3rd, 2008 by Daniel
Nice hack. If I could only find that bell set now…
And what is wrong with the propeller? It is a nice entry level 8 core chip. Besides, it is obvious that the kid got a lot of help (read: adults did all the work) from his father, uncle and Parallax, which gets free advertising now ;)
Posted at 9:33 am on Apr 4th, 2008 by JB
i’m 13 and i own a Parallax BS2 microcontroller. that looks like some serious wiring i wish my dad could teach me all that stuff. i have no idea how to do that
Posted at 6:20 pm on Apr 4th, 2008 by roo
Give the kid a break! Sure his dad may have helped him but it sounds like he did a lot of it himself too. Plenty of youngsters are into electronics (I know I was at that age, building Dick Smith kits!).
Posted at 8:29 am on Apr 6th, 2008 by sam
i’m 14 and i’ve been teaching my dad about microcontrollers… not the other way around.
Posted at 8:01 pm on Apr 6th, 2008 by kaelb
I’ve been interested in automated mechanical music for a long time. I am currently building a solenoid driven xylophone, and have been looking for a cheap set of those bells for a while.
Check out these pages…
http://home.comcast.net/~rblang/xylotron/xylotron.htm
http://logosfoundation.org/instrum-god.html
Posted at 8:24 am on Apr 7th, 2008 by agent420
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Wow his mom and/or dad did a good job.
Posted at 12:21 am on Apr 3rd, 2008 by JCF-Maynard