A robot that dances to music. G‚ Wouldn`t it be wicked cool to have a cute little robot on your desk dancing to Fatboy Slim Winamp provides a nice API for writing music visualization plug-ins. G‚ I wrote a plug-in that sends signals to the parallelport that correspond to the waveform data in the song being played. G‚ By setting the pins of the parallel port on and off,
Click here to download the full size of the above Circuit.
I can control the robot and attempt to make him respond appropriately to changes in the music. My first dancing robot prototype was a metal and rubber incarnation of the Kinetix dancing baby. G‚ I took the baby`s rubber arms off, inserted circular plastic joints, and soldered them onto some 99-cent DC motors from Radio Shack. G‚ The motors were hooked up to a protoboard on which I built a circuit that turned them on and off in response to the signals from the parallel port. Unfortunately, the baby`s thick arms were a little too heavy for the wimpy motors I was using. G‚ Instead of a dancing baby, all I got was a baby that twitched uncontrollably to the music, as if Winamp were givingG‚ him an epileptic seizure. I decided to try a smaller dancing figure instead, so I outfitted this Buzz Lightyear action figure with the same motors. G‚ He dances in rhythm very well for songs with strong drumbeats, but not as well for quiet songs. If you want to try building your own dancing robot, I can send you my plug-in. G‚ Here`s a diagram of the circuit I used. G‚ This diagram is for just one motor, but the parallel port has eight data pins, so you can replicate this circuit three more times to control four motors. The motor can be turned forward by setting pin 1 on and pin 2 off, or in reverse by setting 1 off and 2 on. G‚ Turning both pins off turns off the motor, while turning both pins on blows out your transistors (I did this a...
This project fits more for custom made battery casing that can have more space to hide things inside. This switch with few alterations can be used for any other project as well but is designed based on e-bike needs! This project use a clever functionality of....
The circuit described here uses ultrasonic oscillations and operates based on the propagation velocity of these oscillations in the air. Thus, we can easily determine the distance of two points if the time within which the wave travels this distance is....
Sometimes the precious metals are hidden too deep and are not detected except with complicated devices. In many cases, however, small pieces of precious metal buried near the surface can be detected by relatively simple means. Everyone is very attractive to....
Many times for various reasons we forget or can not water the plants that we have in our homes. And many humidity sensors units just notify us with a beeping sound or with a flashing light, that the pot needs watering. But what if we are away from home? This....
The principle behind a metal detector is really very simple. Proof of this is the circuit that follows, in which it proves that the construction of a metal detector can be done in the minute, with few components that we find very easily everywhere. With the....
The sub-harmonic bass generator is a sound producing unit for guitars. The sound it produces looks very much like that of the bass guitar. The octave generator is sometimes quite unusual since it does not produce any of the usual ways of coloring the sound,....
In the past the sounding (sea bottom measurement) was done with the "bullet", that is, with a heavy lead object that the seamen plucked into the sea hung from a calibrated rope. As soon as the "bullet" reached the bottom, the depth appeared directly from the....
This Amplifier was designed to have the following specifications: Distortion less than 0.1% at full power of 100W even at 20KHz. Power has to be attributed to an extended bandwidth. The output transistors must be protected against short circuits. The power....
A series of LEDs serve to alert the gardener when plants need water. Using two conventional digital integrated LEDs and a series of LEDs, we make a very useful device for gardening. The device detects the amount of water in the pot and alerts the grower.....
characters left: