Robot Guitar

One of the most beautiful DIYs we have showcased. Ben Reardon is a civil engineer who is also interested in arts, science and electronic technology. This DIY amalgamates all of his varied interests and how musically! The idea for Robot Guitar came to Ben when in a World Expo in 1998 he saw in a Japanese pavilion a robot playing a guitar to perfection. Awestruck, he promised himself he would build something like that one day.

Robot Guitar – chiming 3pm like Big Ben from benreardon on Vimeo.

27 years after Expo88, Ben found that the time was right to build what he called the world’s first “Network Time Protocol accurate, Internet of Things connected, Big Ben chiming grandfather clock, firewall log playing, door chiming, guitar playing robot” thing! He had picked up arduino and Rpi and as a hobby learnt them. So what followed were many busy nights and weekends, working on this project on and off, hacking elements of music, computing, engineering, hardware, circuitry, art, lighting, cyber security, time, and working with different kinds of materials- to put it all together for an ideal embedded systems project. The Robot Guitar.

Robot guitar – Buttons and LEDs from benreardon on Vimeo.

We insist that you visit his blog and read about the project in its entirety. You will also find all the codes and design instructions. Ben’s example can not only play chimes or tunes, but also convert firewall logs into sounds and thus created a different type of interactive guitar. Ben notes that the servo rig is important and needs to be right – he will tell you how.

This one is a wonderful, wonderful project and we are inspired by it. Hope you too are.

Robot Guitar – Pimping some firewall logs, like a boss from benreardon on Vimeo.