MindStorms robot playing guitar

[Houseplanman]

Very nice!!

[SoadOwnsUrFace]

Congrats, you beat MIT with lego.

[zomgitzakitteh]

still alot better than little wayne

[soundmusiclover]

the robot is really crap, cant beat a human at that

[MattsMuses]

Get it to go a bit faster you could get it to play some pop punk with those simple chords :O

[210breed]

@MattsMuses or if you have extra cash set up multiples to play one after the other and it would seem to play faster

[battlestrikers100]

WOW O_O

[BasLindo]

Instead check out the violin- and trompet-playing robots. Those are truely mind-blowing.

And with the invention of the artificial vocal-cord, a robot-singer may not be farfetched!

[BasLindo]

I'm very impressed, i got to admit. But a thing that is bothering me is that people, you included, invent a robot for guitar "strumming", and defining it as "playing". You took it a step further and invented a way for the robot to play major-tuned fret-chords, and that actually makes it sound good. But untill some genius robot-engineer invents a robot which can play a standard-tuned guitar by moving freely around on the fret-board, please leave the term "guitar-playing robot" un-used.

[planetery]

Too bad it's only good for open-tuned barre chords, because the absolute perfect song choice would be "Welcome to the Machine"..

Awesome job, though..

[guitarstuffplace]

this is badass

[Timmy4pawz]

MIT use their top students and money in creating a self playing guitar, this guy does it better with Kinex!

[sonique25]

automatic boards of canada

[minimanmike123]

one day lego will take over the world

[xuberall]

next they wil be screading metallica songs \m/

[screechkid116]

so k'nex is good for something!

[FlyingWhaleHarooooo]

Sounds like a slow acoustic version of Mother by Pink Floydd

[organfairy]

@FlyingWhaleHarooooo - Could be. I don't know that particular piece.

[FuhrerKaiser]

@FlyingWhaleHarooooo Mother do you think they like this song?

[Mina1989F]

hi i like your projekt very much and i done the same one :) can you please send me a dokometation for it ??:) i´ll be very greatful

thx

[waydekight]

And build you a girlfriend out of legos to play your guitar to!

[waydekight]

Oh my god.. If you have this much time just learn to play guitar

[Beemerboy324]

There is far more value in these "wastes of time" than the unimaginative could possibly comprehend.

[superlindhout]

can you find building instructions on the internet for this project i would like it to build it by myself.

[IPODsify]

No make it play the drumz

[ZachValkyrie]

It's PetrucciBot!

[TheSozimal]

Play that blues !

[SonicProvocateur]

Lego robot guitar > MIT automated guitar.

Screw yourself MIT.

I'm glad I dropped out of the college of physics, especially now that NASA is dead...i'm still making more money as a musician!

[mjstevenson911]

next you need to teach it to read music. Awesome man

[shohenadel]

dude thats sick and totally awesome but learn the insterment

[BMXREBELRIDER]

hahahahahahaHAHAHAhahahaAHAHAH­AHaahAHAHa!!!!!!

[Makaveli675]

Lmao you used legos, that's fucking awesome.

[dimzay]

Open G tuning! Smart

[Uberloinvongenchler]

Life is way too short to be doing this, learn to play the instrument instead...

[organfairy]

@Uberloinvongenchler - It wasn't the goal to play the guitar. The idea was to see if it was possible for LEGO bricks to play actual instruments and someone challenged me to go for a guitar. You could call it a nerd project!

[andrewsciberras]

@organfairy Uberloinvongenchler should go home ... this was a nice idea :) ... i'm guessing you tuned the chords to be as if the robot was playing bar chords right?

[organfairy]

@andrewsciberras - The guitar was tuned in "open C" in order for the robot to play other chords by pressing all six strings on the same fret.

[jetzaah007]

@organfairy

I call it:

AWESOME!

Great job! 5/5

[pinksynth]

@Uberloinvongenchler You are a pitifully small-minded person.

[Kyothine]

@Uberloinvongenchler shut up. you think this is pitiable? what I think is worth pitying is when some fuckhead on a youtube video tries to diss someone else's creative works. enjoy your unemployment, you unmotivated asshole.

[Haedgehog]

nice :-D

[cangrizante]

cool

[FlegDesigns]

Since it's tuned to the chord, might be cool to make one 'capo' then have it slide up to the right fret then compress? ;) that would be very cool. Still is.

[organfairy]

@FlegDesigns - I tried that but the problem is that the "capo" has to be quite tight to work properly and the Lego part has a tendency to come apart from the strain. But it could maybe be possible to make it slide and then compress as you were suggesting.

[hydrogenhead]

@organfairy: I understand the problem and have a design that works around that. I have a video here on Youtube and a write-up on the Lego Mindstorms website with some stills detailing the construction (look for Guitar-bot by hydrogenhead on either website. Your way around the issue was also very clever.

[PickUpYourLighters]

@FlegDesigns Why not replace the actual part that touches the strings with a curved, polished steel surface, and play it like a slide?

[CalabreseMPC]

lol it's just open chords.. I was expecting some mega shredding action

[BreGamingUnit]

This scares me!

[xXmOtHaFuCkaXx]

im sure the robot is better than you

[Mikeyringo]

Hideous

[simonfergus1]

that is cool

[maanu40]

AWSOME!!!

[markopolo000]

wow. thats talent right there

[lildragon5555]

damn, now make it do crazy stuff XD

[glytch123456789]

wow... i havethe same thing hahahaha lol nice job

[LennyAndMike]

LEGOS FTW

[JamesGod08]

This will be the future of electronic music

[williamthomasmi10]

Haha this is better than the "MIT automatic guiar"!!!

[BeholdTheAshes]

@williamthomasmi10 way better indeed.

[yofsih9]

OMG awsome!

[1484me]

awesome, but not sure its that great for the gutar

[organfairy]

@1484me - It's a guitar that I bought cheap and my friends say that it is crap!

[TheFamiliaAlves]

VERY cool

[1994fishcake]

Nice

[noutjie]

nice

[jimmycrackcorn1981]

cool but sounds so robotic and terrible. its a abonimation to music

[beneyedens]

mate its a joke

its a robot made out of lego haha

[organfairy]

Not exactly a joke. More a case of "is it possible to make LEGOs do this?"

[organfairy]

Yes, I know that this is far below my usual standard :-)

But my boss showed me the video "the Trons" and challenged me to do something similar out of LEGO.

[Anarchemitis]

Had to start somewhere.

[smashmonkeyEXTREME]

cool

[DarkZekeX]

lol thats cool :) its a nice chord progression too

[Acting12abc]

nice i need it for my collection , hahaha jk

[organfairy]

Yes, it is nerd-ish. And I am a nerd.

But how can a LEGO robot be gay?

[bradless04]

I like what you have done here. I think it would be cool if you could get it to play more chords, and to different tempo's as well. Then, if you could program it to do songs, that be awesome!

[organfairy]

A different tempo is easy. But it is harder to get it to play more than 5 chords.

[bradless04]

Ahhh okay

[stevensj13]

How did you do this? Could you send me a message explaining it?

[KeriHilsonRoxs]

that's cool

[TheDeadPlayers]

Wow thats awesome!

[miragef19]

i love it

[spyrome876]

That was awesome!!!!

[djfrogfm]

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz, ((i fell asleep listening to it)the music is soothing!!)

[bha999]

Awsome... :D

[thaBoooooogerMan]

lol thats pretty creative. nice job

[theyoungster2]

WOW!!!

[jakeatollah]

hmmm, if LEGOs can do this, only a matter of time before some idiot goes mad and makes real robots and attempts to destroy the world and commits suicide and gets a will smith wannabe to fight and kill them... about 100 years at the least

[organfairy]

If this madman uses the LEGO MindStorms set it will have to be a short battle: The batteries only lasts for 70 minutes!

[jakeatollah]

i meant in about 100 years, and they last longer 70 mins! well, if you don't use them 70 mins straight, and i meant robots NOT made of NXT... still cool tho

[organfairy]

Yes, I know :-)

I just thought it was a fun idea to imagine a megalomaniac trying to take over the world in 70 minutes because he is on a limited battery capacity.

[jakeatollah]

"BOW DOWN TO ME FOR I AM THE RULER OF THE WORLD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

"yeah, for like 70 minutes"

"UMMM....I RIGGED THEM?"

"*splash*"

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! MY ARMY!!!"

okay, i think we should stop having a commenting conversation k? idc tho

[FenderStrat65]

make it play a real song

[imahlle]

very nice. have yuo done it for you self ? :O

[organfairy]

Yes, but it was inspired by another video with a robot band called "the Trons"

[devil0717]

omg how did you do that ??? i want one dude thats really impressive

[yoanik44]

good job!!

[XxandywayxX]

omg that's great!!!

dude, how did u came up with the program and the building??!

that just stunning!!

i cant make mine play a pre-recorded song!

lol, yeah, that robot plays guitar better than me xD

[organfairy]

Last year I did some music videos where I used the NXT as a solo instrument with it's own tone generator. But this year I thought it could be fun to have it play some real instruments. Then somebody send me a link to a video with "the Trons" - also here on YT - and I was inspired by the guitar robot in that particular video.

[niveditavasant]

very nicely built........ )

[niveditavasant]

can u send me the ldd files? and the progamming part

[organfairy]

The robot was not build from an ldd file. I made it up myself. Another thing is that the robot has to be build to fit the guitar and they are not all the same. I have three guitars and only one of them fit into the robot. I have thought about making a video where I explain how the robot is build and showing all the details so that others can build a similar robot.

[Aersus]

It'll be a great idea. I'm specially interested on the part that can control the motors (I think you used servomotors)

Nice work!

[NXTLiftBoy]

Very good! i like the way you use two motors for obtaining 4 fretted positions and one open. Smart to tune it in C, saves a lot of hassle "fingering" chords.

Coming to think of it, in principle you *might* be able to drive up/down (ie slide) the frets with a single motor, and have one spare motor for picking, say, a minor or major fingering? This requires an untapered neck tough, typically not what guitars have. Anyway.

Very nice build, keep up the good work!

[organfairy]

I have actually made a slide guitar. But it doesn't work very well. The problem is that in order to press down the strings the sliding mechanism will have to be quite heavy or forced against the fretboard in another way. Therefore the motor have problems pulling the slider back and forth. Another problem is that it will have to stop quite precise and move fast between the chords - two demands that doesn't work very well together. Maybe a ukulele could be played that way...

[NXTLiftBoy]

I would wanna give it a go with (large?) rubber wheels pressing/rolling over the strings, besides an identically driven wheel at the back of the neck. Indeed both wheels need a spring of some sort between them to maintain pressure. Maybe one day i'll have ago at it that way.

I am still very impressed by the idea to play the guitar!!!

[jordan66336633]

Dude! This is soooo cool! are you planning on making an ldd file, or some type of instructions? cause i would really like to see them! this is really cool.

[organfairy]

I don't have any experience in making .ldd files. But maybe I will post some detailed close-up's for inspiration.

[ronaldmcrae]

Very nice.

[aymx]

THIS IS GREEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA­AAAAAAT THis is a very new idea for me

[organfairy]

Thanks.

There will be more instruments soon.