Rather than mucking around with Gumstix and stuff, the excellent Christian Blanchard runs his Orgautomatix from MIDI data and a MIDI reader on a Palm (pic here of the setup). Old Palms go for a tenner and the Z22 is around 70 quid at the moment. IttyMidi does a package including an old Palm (only…
As you can see in the photo of the monkey under construction he sits on a circular ply board that is attached to a bar the other end of which runs in a gear-driven eccentric self-aligning bearing which rocks him with a circular motion. This motion is continuous and draws attention to him. If a…
A couple of things found (a Topsy, for example, “runs for 7 hours on a 12 volt 30 AH battery“): http://www.mark-ju.net/bike_ride/equipment/charger.htm charges stack of 6Vs For about the same weight as a generator setup, you could get a solar charger that works whether you are pedaling or not. Batteries.com has one that weighs .28 pounds…
D says re controlling barrel organ valves using MIDI: Could probably do that very neatly using micro pc like a gumstix No need for hard drive for midi files – use flash memory. Power it off solar/dynamo, probably. Customer projects Do I want something like this? You bet: More random interesting stuff Roomba & Gumstix
Re John Chappell’s smack toddler, here’s Thomas COW from Bangor, County Down, Northern Ireland singing “Bottle take effect” by Jim Reeves: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IyIMgDR7Bo There’s a photo out there somewhere of my father helping me drink Guinness out of a bottle, aged 3. I think we’ll be able to pull statute of limitations on that one. (Via…
(Via Twankle & Glisten) Other news: I started drawing stuff, talked to a couple of engineers, and am looking forward to meeting a French organ man, basically to see if he can do me some kidneys)
I’ve been genuinely surprised by how many people are still using paper rolls to control their organs, and how many organs are still being produced for this technology. The means used to bridge the gap between electronic composition and paper device control are interesting–they remind me of what I think happened in (Italian?) textiles in…