Had a great time at the Orlando Maker Faire October 22nd and 23rd. The pipe organ proved to be very popular with several hundred people stopping by to ask about how it worked and how it was made.
It was especially popular with the kids.
My friend Jim, who has been helping me, and our wives came along. Here you can see the Maker of Merit award that we got.
Finally, after the interview Caleb Kraft suggested that adding LEDs to the organ indicating the note that was playing would make it more interesting to watch. I did that and here is a YouTube video showing the newly added LEDs.
Very cool. Like the lights. Putting on the Ritz!
ReplyDeleteMusic is the best fun and art of life...
ReplyDeleteReally interested in this project. My son is a church organist. I was given a Rasberry Pi as a retirement present and learning Python to keep the grey cells moving! Looking for a major project and thought of adapting your approach to play a bank of descant or treble recorders. Happy to do the mechanical engineering bits but would like hints on the software side of things. Can you help?
ReplyDeleteSorry for my tardy response. I would be happy to help out with the software. Contact me on wakrec@gmail.com and I'll do my best to assist you.
DeleteWendell
Ton E, I just realized I gave you the name of my blog, not my email. I imagine you've moved on without me, but if there's anything I can do email me on (this is now the correct email) wakkap@gmail.com
DeleteWendell
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteNice to be visiting your blog again, it been months for me. Well this article that i’ve been waited for so long. I need this article to complete my assignment in the college, and it has same topic with your article. Thanks, great share.
ReplyDeletedrum set
Well, I'm finding this a couple years late, but I love this project.I'm curious as to how long of "throw" the solenoids require? (the hack-saw blade springs are genius!)
ReplyDeleteAlso, is the top of the windchest in 2 pieces so it can be removed without disturbing the actuating wires? How do you seal that?
Thanks for your interest. As far as throw on the solenoids goes, a half-inch seems to be plenty, especially given the fact that the larger pipes the larger the the plumbing and the holes in the bottom of the windchest. You may even be able to get by with a little less. That does lead on to a couple of other points though. That half-inch number supposes that that is a half-inch movement at the valve. Thus you need to add on any backlash that might be present in the wire or the connections at the solenoids and the valves. The initial setup for me was a little tricky. Having said that, though, once I had them set up they didn't require much more fiddling.
DeleteYep, as for cheap and functional the saw blades worked well. Esthetics are another matter, and if I take it apart sometime I might dress them up with a grinder and some paint.
Yes, keen observation. That's exactly why the windchest cover is in two pieces. As I implied above, the last thing you want to have to do is disconnect all those wires to get to the inside of the windchest. The way I made it is I cut the pieces to size. Then I clamped them together. I took an appropriately sized drill bit and drilled holes for each wire right at the seam between the two pieces. Finally I took two pieces of felt and glued one to the edge of each half of the cover. Any leaks are inconsequential relative to the volume produced by the blower. I hope this helped. Let me know if you have any more questions, and if you decide to build one I would love to hear about it.
Thanks for the response! That helps. I've been considering a calliope- type MIDI machine. The "whistles" on a calliope, on the surface, at least, seem simpler to produce & tune than the wood organ pipes. I'm thinkin' PVC pipes for the whistles.
ReplyDeleteI see there are some Chinese solenoids that do 10mm, which is roughly 3/8". Those solenoids can be had for under $3 each when ordered from China. I'm gonna order a few and see what happens.
Another thought would be mini-servo motors to pull up the "valves". I suspect they might be slower-acting than the solenoids, but draw way less current, bypassing setting up all those big mosfets to drive the solenoids.
I'll keep you posted.
Certainly the pipes were the most time consuming part of my build so if you can short circuit that using PVC I think that is a good do.
DeleteYes, I have looked long and hard at those Chinese solenoids. At $3 each they are certainly worth a try. I bought mine from Electronics Goldmine and they were heavier duty, but they were used. An advantage/disadvantage of mine is that they have a 100% duty cycle. Thus they never overheat. The other side of that coin though is that continuous duty solenoids tend to be weaker than a comparably sized non-continuous.
Also unless the plunger is captive there isn't a fixed throw. It all depends on how much power you need. The further out the core is, the weaker the pull, whereas the last 1/16th inch of pull would knock you off your feet.(If you had tiny tiny feet.)
I don't want to discourage you from trying anything but I agree that the servos would be much slower and if you don't get a clean valve opening you could get some squeaking. On the other hand solenoids can be very noisy and that noise is percussive so it can be hard to get rid of. I used o-rings as cushions but they still make noise.
Just for the sake of clarification, I didn't use mosfets, I just used darlington transistors that are about four for a dollar.
One other thought, the reason I was looking at those Chinese solenoids was I have been working on another project, a self-playing MIDI guitar and was hoping to use them to fret the strings. With the solenoids I have, though, I just couldn't get a large enough combination of power and throw. Ultimately I went with the kind of pneumatics that they use in player pianos. These have the advantage that you can make them with whatever speed, power and reach that you want. I posted the first part of a two or three part blog the other day. In the first one I describe using servos to pick the strings. In the next one or two I will talk about the pneumatics for fretting. You might take a look at that. Some type of air valve is certainly conventional on large older pipe organs. I still used solenoid valves but using a more typical pipe organ valve with some sort of pneumatic has the advantage that it doesn't need much throw.
If you get a chance I would love to hear about your experience with the Chinese solenoids.