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.
11 thoughts on “MIDI Controlled Xmas Bells”
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Wow his mom and/or dad did a good job.
wow, i wish my parents were even 1% as into electronics as his are.
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…
Parallax… Yuck.
Project overall. Awesome.
THAT IS REALLY AWESOME i wish my parents would give me that kind of stuff i could never afford anything that complicated
So thats how nerds are made.
I agree, propeller!?
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 ;)
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
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!).
i’m 14 and i’ve been teaching my dad about microcontrollers… not the other way around.
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