Blog Home

Make Your Own Solenoids And Play XylophoneMake Your Own Solenoids And Play XylophoneMake Your Own Solenoids And Play Xylophone

Davide GombaDecember 3rd, 2010

 

[Humberto Evans] and the team at Nerd Kits posted a nice Christmas project about making a xylophone and solenoids triggered by a microcontroller (they share the project).

We’re unlikely to replicate this machining process but the solenoids are another story all together. Starting at about 3:30 you can learn about designing, building, and using these little marvels. They’re basically an electromagnetic cuff with a metal slug in the middle. The solenoid seen above uses a body milled from HDPE and wrapped with magnet wire. The slug in the center is steel, with a few rare-earth magnets at the top. When you run current through the coil it repulses the magnets on the slug, witch then strikes the xylophone key. Using a MOSFET and a protection diode, actuating them is as simple as sending a digital high from your microcontroller of choice.

Via [HackADay] source [NerdKits]

 

 

[Humberto Evans] and the team at Nerd Kits posted a nice Christmas project about making a xylophone and solenoids triggered by a microcontroller (they share the project).

We’re unlikely to replicate this machining process but the solenoids are another story all together. Starting at about 3:30 you can learn about designing, building, and using these little marvels. They’re basically an electromagnetic cuff with a metal slug in the middle. The solenoid seen above uses a body milled from HDPE and wrapped with magnet wire. The slug in the center is steel, with a few rare-earth magnets at the top. When you run current through the coil it repulses the magnets on the slug, witch then strikes the xylophone key. Using a MOSFET and a protection diode, actuating them is as simple as sending a digital high from your microcontroller of choice.

Via [HackADay] source [NerdKits]

 

[Humberto Evans] and the team at Nerd Kits posted a nice Christmas project about making a xylophone and solenoids triggered by a microcontroller (they share the project).

We’re unlikely to replicate this machining process but the solenoids are another story all together. Starting at about 3:30 you can learn about designing, building, and using these little marvels. They’re basically an electromagnetic cuff with a metal slug in the middle. The solenoid seen above uses a body milled from HDPE and wrapped with magnet wire. The slug in the center is steel, with a few rare-earth magnets at the top. When you run current through the coil it repulses the magnets on the slug, witch then strikes the xylophone key. Using a MOSFET and a protection diode, actuating them is as simple as sending a digital high from your microcontroller of choice.

Via [HackADay] source [NerdKits]

 

One Response to “Make Your Own Solenoids And Play XylophoneMake Your Own Solenoids And Play XylophoneMake Your Own Solenoids And Play Xylophone”

  1. xtoddx Says:

    Fantastic. Some members of Collexion hackerspace took on a similar project that used capacitive touch sensing to fire the solenoids. The final product was auctioned for charity. There is a video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJ1atViUuDk

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in with your Arduino account to post a comment.