The Motor Orchestra II

Anyone remember the days of DOS games "playing" music by moving the floppy drive heads? Well, I had to test a new robot platform, but I was too lazy to go build an actual frame with a pair of wheels. So what can I do to test the motor speed controls with nothing to move? Watch.

These are the control boards that we'll be using in the Robotics Workshop at this year's Euskal Encounter 15, in Barakaldo, Spain. This is one of Spain's largest LANParties, with up to 4096 people attending this year.

Oh, yeah, and it's in stereo too :) (melody on the left, bass line on the right). Not bad for 18 hand-tuned notes.

New in v2.0 (also known as next-afternoon version) - MIDI interface! On a sidenote, this could be really useful for an actual robot - you could program movement commands using MIDI sequences.

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• robot
• motor
• speed
• pwm
• mario
• bros
• nintendo
• ek15
• euskal
• encounter
• 15
• taller
• robotica
• MIDI

[acebrawler73]

wow dude. you are talented. I'm just starting to learn to program. Like JUST starting. Can you read and/or write in any programing languages?

[marcan42]

A number of them. Once you've gone through 3 or 4, all the others are just variations.

I can say I know C, Python, Java, Javascript, PIC16/18 asm, bash, and some Perl, VB (yuck), C++, and C#. This project is coded in PIC18 asm (the code in the chip), and Python (PC-side frontend). If you want to start programming, I suggest python. It's easy, clean, high-level, reasonably fast, and has a very large set of libraries. There are several very good tutorials available.

[bkisme]

they sound like ducks.

[mfsinc]

happy little motors :)

[taejamhaha]

@marcan42 how to study it???

our high school teacher here in the philippines taught us C++ first huhu

[MaxxFordham]

Haha, that's pretty funny! I'll have to read up some more on this later.

[danwat1234]

what old DOS game utilized floppy drive motors for music??????????

[10cmsub]

1:58 sounds like a duck

[SwissDonutFactory]

awesome dude! :)

[10cmsub]

this makes me kinda sad i killed my little motor

[DanFrederiksen]

nice. open or closed loop control? do you watch the EMF

[kaveenr1]

MiDI

[TheFireball100]

ingenius!!!

[CharlesBabbageJR]

cool :)

extra tape for the upper octave!