Robotic Drummer – Solidworks design workflow from Noah King on Vimeo.

The second attempt at the Robotic Drummer project began on the computer in Solidworks. First I built a library of common parts, like the servos and switches, and then I designed a way to efficiently get the parts to assemble together. This helped work around some of the construction problems I had run into the week before, and also took out a lot of the guess work of getting parts to combine together in a strong and light-weight configuration. Once the CAD version was complete, I used it to make measurements off of, which lead to a problem-free day of fabricating the physical model.

Robotic Drummer – 4 servo configuration, pre-test setup from Noah King on Vimeo.

Working off of the CAD data, I built the pot-switch controller box and daisy-chained together the servo motors into the two arm setup. There was a lot of wiring and assembling to do, so I shot this video after finishing the setup of the parts and before official sending code to the arduino and seeing if anything worked.

Robotic Drummer – 4 servo test from Noah King on Vimeo.

Last week I assembled some code to get the 2 servos to move and be controlled by the POT switches. In this test, I expanded the code to work with four motors and four switches. After sending it to the Arduino, the robot worked fine, except for some loose connections between the board and the motors. I plan to solder these terminals so that they are not so loose. Additionally, solenoid actuators need to be added to the end of the arms so that a drum stick can get fired down towards a drum surface.