Self Playing Xylophone

..., Thu Dec 06 2007, 05:38PM

As a part of the robotics class at my school, we competed in the JPL Invention Challenge

The robot that my team built was a pretty simple design, basic stamp -> big honking IGBTS ->small (low R, pulls about 50a off the 25v buss ) solenoid, which smashed a cut off bolt into a piece of copper pipe.

It played a C scale (from 500hz to 1khz) or the first 10 notes of the Canadian national anthem (teacher is Canadian) at about 90-100dB.

But that would have been too easy, so I also built an audiomodded tesla coil to compete, but unfortunately when all of the judges crowded around it got sent out of tune and we didn't get any points for that part of the competition.

Luckily, one of the other teams from my school (which luckily made me an honorary member since I did all of the wiring on their bot) did place first, defeating the team that has placed 1st since the contest started (10 years ago)

In any case, here are a few pictures







We also made it on the local news, which I have mirrored on the forum I am the clueless dude in red seen when the winners are standing with the trophy. NOT the dude with my name (Peter Krogen) that was interviewed.