Welcome to the web-site for Build Your Music, the automatically-playing robotic xylophone that you can build yourself, and load with whatever music you choose.
Here’s how it works. On this website you will find step-by-step instructions for building the robotic xylophone that you see here. Links to the parts required are provided so that you can purchase them from various on-line stores. Some basic wood-working skills are needed to build the enclosure. However, all electronic components can be assembled without any soldiering.
The xylophone is controlled by an Arduino Uno, with a character LCD and rotary encoder as the user interface. Arduino source-code can be downloaded freely from Github.
The specific songs played by the xylophone are loaded via MIDI files. If you search the Internet, you can find a MIDI file for just about every song that has ever been written. Different people have different types of music that they prefer to listen to: Rock, Country, Pop, Disco, Oldies, Bluegrass, Folk, Spritual, Christian/Worship, Jazz, Big Band, Classical, Movie Sound Tracks, Musicals, TV Themes, and the list goes on. And some seasons, such as Christmas, will have songs familiar to us all, played in many of the above genres.
No matter what type of music you like, you can find a plethora of MIDI files of your choosing. MIDI files are saved from a computer onto an SD Card. The Arduino program reads the list of MIDI files from the SD Card, and the user can select which MIDI file they want the xylophone to play.
If you enjoy what you see here, please Like the Build Your Music Facebook page.
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