Automated Xylophone Demo

An Electrical Engineering 201 project built, wired, and programmed by Jon S., Mark W., and Justin G. (University of South Carolina, Columbia)

Poor video quality.. taken on my phone. Hopefully Jon will post something better up some time soon.

How it works...
25 push-type solenoids wired up to a PLC (programmable logic controller), each with their own key. Solenoids trigger, hitting the end of a mallet, which rotates on its axis and strikes a note.

Programmed in binary (can also be edited in hex, octal, decimal) from sheet music to spreadsheet to program.

Current PLC program limited us to only 255 lines of code (255 beats), limiting us in song length... this is also why the song might sound a little weird. I was unable to program in the song with the triplets because the file size would just be too large that way, so I went with quarter, eighth, eighth to make it fit.

Materials:
acrylic, wooden mallets, bolts (axis of mallets), push-type solenoids, 24VDC supply, Allen Bradley Micrologix 1100 PLC, RsLogix 500 (software), switches

There were switches that manipulated song speed (pulse width) and song selection, and there was a real-time pause button.

This took about 4 or 5 solid weeks to plan, design, build, wire, and program. A lot of the time was spent cutting and drilling the acrylic... as well as figuring out ways to prevent some solenoids from 'sticking.'

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Automated Xylophone
• Mario
• USC
• Gamecocks

[MrAWESOMESTMANEVER]

he should play this teddy brown songs

[sexydorkmo]

solenoids dont have quiet the same flick of the wrist humans have

[mcfat89]

an amazing invention but it made my ears bleed lol

[justahbustah]

...too bad it didn't work

[Gottie1986]

The Sterling Engine was the best project.....wheres the video of that

[justahbustah]

Mark, you might want to edit the description... the part about video quality