MYO (Make Your Own) – Roundup for September 2009
Posted on September 30, 2009 by SCP
September must not only be back-to-school for students, but also back-to-the-workshop for Makers. This month had quite a few innovative applications for do-it-yourself activity of note.
The interest in this topic is built in on over-riding thought, that these sorts of innovations and design can eventually find their way into corporate R&D labs or more importantly (perhaps forgetting about corporations for the moment), they can find their way to commercialization. I think they’re great opportunities for those interested in technology to see how other inventors are thinking out of the box, solving problems, and developing new paradigms for electronic media devices.
First up this month is a Arduino platform that uses opto sensors, a CD-sized as a platform to hold paper “player” rolls, and the Arduino as a three note polyphonic synthesizer:
an arduino based three note polyphonic music box
John, the inventor has a lot of interesting maker projects, as well as Arduino and Atmel processor information and links on his website.
MAKE magazine subscriber Rich Bernett is in the process of creating a series of cigar-box instruments that are driven by small electric actuators. The cigar-boxes act as an audio chamber to amplify the sound (like the chamber in a guitar). Each instrument has a tuned guitar string that is plucked by an electric motor at various speeds. The actuators appear to be cut off cable ties! Very cool, and they have a unique sound – especially since the strings are plucked at higher rates than a human performer could pluck them.
String-box played via motors
All bow to the great Pete Edwards of Casper Electronics, who modified a Nintendo Entertainment System to become not only a unique sounding synthesizer, but a device that can generate bizarre video output that corresponds to the bleeps and bloops coming out of the box! There’s more on the project over at Make, too.
Tanner, over at Noystoise crafted this mono synth with quite a few adjustable parameters:
Tanner has a blog where he captures his adventures in MYO.
Finally, there’s a pretty slick guitar looper made made by a DIY’er. The control inputs are Arduino powered, but they control PureData, an Open Source music and multimedia project developed by the original author of Max, Miller Puckette.
Like I said, it was a busy month – there were another 5 or 6 projects that we couldn’t get to this month. Please post your comments in the comment section and keep giving us feedback about these round ups.
September must not only be back-to-school for students, but also back-to-the-workshop for Makers. This month had quite a few innovative applications for do-it-yourself activity of note.
The interest in this topic is built in on over-riding thought, that these sorts of innovations and design can eventually find their way into corporate R&D labs or more importantly (perhaps forgetting about corporations for the moment), they can find their way to commercialization. I think they’re great opportunities for those interested in technology to see how other inventors are thinking out of the box, solving problems, and developing new paradigms for electronic media devices.
First up this month is a Arduino platform that uses opto sensors, a CD-sized as a platform to hold paper “player” rolls, and the Arduino as a three note polyphonic synthesizer
Filed Under: MYO / DIY
