Bumpy, The Beautiful DIY MP3 Player

May 15, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 22 Comments

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

[Matt]’s been working on a small hombrew MP3 player, and although it’s not much more useful than an iPod Shuffle, sometimes that’s all you need. Besides, it turned out to be a beautiful project, completely custom, and a great example of what a high resolution 3D printer can do with an enclosure design.

Inside Bumpy is an ATMega32u4 with a VS1003 MP3 codec IC. The device is powered by a 1000mAh lithium battery, and the user interface is an exercise in simplicity; a single click/scroll wheel changes the volume, toggles play and pause, and selects the next or previous track. Eight LEDs mounted in the center of the board glow through the case for status, volume, and interface feedback.

By far the most impressive part of Bumpy is the case. It was printed at [Matt]’s place of employment – Formlabs – in white UV curing resin. The pictures show a surface finish that would be difficult to replicated on a squirting plastic style 3D printer, with a textured, bumpy surface that inspired the name.

Eerie Robotic Instruments Make Use Of Servos And Solenoids

May 15, 2014 by James Hobson 4 Comments

Turbo-gusli

Self-playing pianos are so last year. How about a robotic acoustic-gusli?

[Dmitry Morozov] calls it the Turbo-Gusli or Gusli-Samogudy. A Gusli is perhaps the oldest Russian multi-stringed instrument, which resembles a harp and whose exact history is not quite known. Add Samogudy to the name and you’ve got a “self-playing Gusli”.

The eerie sounding music is produced by six individual servo motors, a regular DC motor, a stepper motor, three solenoids, a handful of springs, and 38 strings. It’s all controlled by two Arduino Unos, with the software written in Pure Data, an open source visual programming language.

He’s made several videos of the exhibit, including a performance that sends shivers down our spines — stick around after the break for a listen!

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Have An Unused DIY Instrument? Send It On Tour With [Imogen Heap]

May 10, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 15 Comments

goofys a dog and plutos a dog but goofy can talk whaaa

[Imogen Heap] is well-known for performing with DIY and cobbled-together instruments, and now she’s teaming up with another famous DIY instrument musician for a world tour. That’s the cool part, now here’s the awesome part: they want to take your DIY musical instrument on tour for a scrapyard symphony.

Both [Imogen] and [Leafcutter] are semi-regular Hackaday features, with [Leafcutter] building hydrophones and [Imogen] doing some crazy stuff turning gestures into music. They’re both known for their strange and esoteric sounds that sends Rolling Stone writers scrambling for a thesaurus, and now they want your disused or discarded music machines to use live on their world tour.

The team is looking for video submissions of any musical creatures you’d like to send around the world. The only real guideline on what they’re looking for is, ‘the weirder the better’, with an apparent slight emphasis on physical machines over the purely electronic.

Video of the duo below.

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Block Noise, Listen To Music

May 4, 2014 by Rich Bremer 37 Comments

Noise Blocking headphones made from industrial earmuffs

Noise-Cancelling Headphones actively cancel external sounds so the listener can hear their media without distraction. They do this by taking external sound waves from an on-board microphone, inverting the audio signal and mixing that with the media audio. The outside sounds and their inverses cancel each other out before reaching the listener’s ears. There is one downside to these types of noise-cancelling headphones, they are very expensive.

[Mike] works in a wood shop and didn’t want to pony up the hundreds of dollars it would cost for a pair of noise-cancelling headphones, let alone having such an expensive electronic device in a dusty workshop. The solution? Make some headphones that will block out the noise but still allow the comfortable listening of music. This project is simple but effective; inexpensive headphones taken apart and installed in a pair of Industrial Ear Muffs. If you’d like to make your own, [Mike] gives step by step on the above link.

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Restoring A Violin With 3D Printed Parts

May 4, 2014 by Adam Fabio 33 Comments

Every family has an heirloom. It might be a watch, a book, or a stuffed pet. [Mike’s] family heirloom was an antique violin. Well, not an entire violin. This particular violin consisted of a detached neck, a body, and one tuning peg. As far as [Mike] knows, no living member of his family has heard it played. [Mike] decided to restore it to playable condition.

[Mike’s] violin had been brought over to America when his family emigrated from France. The primary reason it has been saved is because it bears the name Stradivarius. Stradivarius copies and tributes are plentiful in the wild. Many of the copies are now antiques and good playing instruments in their own right, though not nearly as revered as the real thing. [Mike’s] first step was to determine if his violin was a real Strad, or a copy. Luckily he was able to get in touch with the caretaker of a real Strad in Milwaukee. It turns out that the label on his violin marks it as a copy. According to the caretaker, genuine Stradivarius instruments were signed directly on the wood. The caretaker was further able to identify that [Mike’s] violin was about 100 years old, and a relatively cheap model for the time.

While it wasn’t a real Stradivarius, the violin was still an important part of [Mike’s] family history, and deserved to be played again. Rather than re-create the missing parts to perfectly match the originals, [Mike] decided to use the resources of the Milwaukee Makerspace to create 3D printed parts.

Similar violin parts were scanned at the Makerspace. The final .stl files were sent to Shapeways for printing. [Mike] sent all the parts to a luthier for final fitting and assembly. [Mike’s] family heirloom is no longer an item to be hidden away, but a living breathing instrument for a new generation to enjoy.

NES Cartridge Hack Makes Great Novelty Gift

April 25, 2014 by Will Sweatman 13 Comments

NES cartridge with arduino

Most all of us recall the Blinking Screen of Death on original NES systems. This was caused by a bad connection between the cartridge and the NES cartridge connector. For whatever reason, it became a very popular idea to give a quick blow down the cartridge, even though this didn’t really help. [Dale] decided to play on this annoying problem by making the NES Blow Cart!

Inspired by a previous cartridge hack, [Dale] mounted a custom made circuit sporting the ever popular ATtiny85 in a Super Mario / Duck Hunt cartridge. A small microphone sits where the original cartridge connector was, along with the on/off switch and program header. A quick blow triggers the ATtiny85 to play a song.

The most difficult part for [Dale] was to figure out how to get the ATtiny to play “music”. This was solved with the discovery of a library called Rtttl. This allowed him to take old Nokia Super Mario and Zelda ringtones and get them on the Attiny85. All files, including the rtttl library are available on his github. Be sure to stick around after the break for a video of the project in action.

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Interactive Gloves Turn Gestures Into Music

April 17, 2014 by James Hobson 11 Comments

Imogen Heap wearing her Mi.Mu gloves

[Imogen Heap] is a UK-based musician who is trying to change the way we think about making music. She’s been working on a pair of gloves called the Mi.Mu, and they’re getting close to production.

In the included interview she explains that while computers and technology have brought many new advances to music, twiddling dials and pushing random buttons “is not very exciting for me, or the audience”. With these gloves, the artist becomes one with the music and interaction.

The current iteration of gloves use flex sensors along each finger to determine the movement (along with motion sensors for other gestures). She’s been through many designs and hopes to integrate e-materials into the next — using the actual glove as the sensor (not physical flex sensors).

She’s been working with both developers and musicians mapping the various motions of the gloves to music which makes sense in an intuitive way, and it’s very unique to see in action.

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