Auto Xylophone with Homemade Solenoids

Pretty cool! FWIW, this is a glockenspiel or bells (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Glockenspiel" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Glockenspiel</a>), not a xylophone (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Xylophone" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Xylophone</a>).

Very cool project! But I would dispute this:<p>&gt; <i>buying 24 Solenoids is quite expensive</i><p>They&#x27;re about $1-2 apiece on Aliexpress; I doubt making your own can cost much less?<p>In my experience, making one solenoid is fun just to see how it works (and how simple it is, really); but making more than one is a little painful and not fun.

Pat Metheny made an album called Orchestrion using an entire orchestra&#x2F;band of real instruments played by solenoids over MIDI. Great music. (If you like Pat Metheny.)<p>It was an insane project. He even took it on tour.<p>The actual build was by Eric Singer and his team.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wired.com&#x2F;2010&#x2F;01&#x2F;orchestrion&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wired.com&#x2F;2010&#x2F;01&#x2F;orchestrion&#x2F;</a>

<p><pre><code> &quot;I used to hate electromagnetism&quot; </code></pre> Not a sentence I expected to hear today.

It’s like the best homemade doorbell ever!

I have a full octave of organ pipes, and I&#x27;ve always dreamed of making an instrument out of it. I&#x27;ve just never figured out how to make the electrically-actuated valves.

Related: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=1W81jQN__88">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=1W81jQN__88</a><p>The artist is Grandbrothers and one of them is a jazz pianist and the other one is a roboticist. The latter sets up systems to control solenoids striking the strings and body of a grand piano while the former plays on the keys. It&#x27;s a duet between human and machine.

Fun project, they could have hand winded those solenoids which a drill instead…the end result would look way better

I have to say, those are some ugly solenoids. Is it really that unusual&#x2F;ocd to want them a little neater?

The Yamaha Disklavier is a player piano that uses a similar solenoid actuation technique: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Disklavier" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Disklavier</a>

This is something I&#x27;ve dreamed about doing in one form or another since I was a teenager almost 30 years ago.<p>But the best thing about this story is the video &quot;Without the Xylophone&quot; - a terrifying robotic bed of nails.

Looks very interesting. I see Arduino is used here. Do you feel the latency?<p>You can have a look at Daisy and Bela as well :)

Artificial Intelligence is mentioned in the intro, but was it actually applied?

would it be possible to induce the vibration of the metal piece (assuming it&#x27;s magnetic) without nails?<p>using very rapid magnetic oscillations (like a speaker??)?<p>I think the electronics would be different, but is it possible?

Very nice way of showing the build progress with the animated gifs.